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


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….


 
Angel FireMy 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.

Angel Fire:

The First Book of Fallen Angels

by Valmore Daniels
4.5 out of 5 stars   6 Reviews
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
 
 
Click here to download Angel Fire: The First Book of Fallen Angels (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
 Visit Amazon’s Valmore Daniels Page and check out his earlier novel, Forbidden The Stars, also just 99 cents
 
UK CUSTOMERS: Click on the title below to download
excerptFree Kindle Nation Shorts – March 16, 2011
An Excerpt from
ANGEL FIRE

by Valmore Daniels
Copyright © 2011 by Valmore Daniels and published here with his permission
Angel Fire
The First Book of Fallen Angels
by Valmore Daniels
Excerpt Copyright © 2011 Valmore Daniels. All rights reserved.
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

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.

So what about the second book? Well, we’ve got some great news for you there in the form of a generous 6,200-word free excerpt that Linda is making available today through our Free Kindle Nation Shorts program!

Then, if you’d like to read more, we’re providing links below that will enable to pick up each of the three books in the series for just 99 cents a piece!

Click here to begin reading the free excerpt

Here’s the set-up:

Text-to-Speech: Enabled

Don’t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

1.

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

4.3 out of 5 stars(15)

 

2.

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

5.0 out of 5 stars (1)

 

3.

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

 

 

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!

UK CUSTOMERS: Click on the title below to download

 

Click here to begin reading the free excerpt

Spiderwork
A Paranormal Romance Fantasy (Apocalypto 2)
by LK Rigel
Kindle Edition ~ Release Date: 2011-01-01

List Price: $0.99

Buy Now

 

Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled


 

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

excerptFree Kindle Nation Shorts – March 14, 2011

 

An Excerpt from

Spiderwork

 

by LK Rigel

Copyright © 2011 by LK Rigel and published here with her permission

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 …

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Spiderwork

A Paranormal Romance Fantasy
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Spiderwork, A Paranormal Romance Fantasy (Apocalypto 2)

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

 

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

Editor, Kindle Nation Daily
©Kindle Nation Daily 2011

QiMy 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.

 

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(Book of the Baba Yaga)

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excerptFree Kindle Nation Shorts – March 12, 2011

 

An Excerpt from

Qi

(Book of the Baba Yaga)  

 

by Elizabeth A. Svigar

Copyright © 2011 by Elizabeth A. Svigar and published here with her permission

Chapter One – Winners

*
Sam peered across the meadow at the target seventy meters away. She took a deep breath and held it. Just seventy meters between her, a perfect score, and acceptance into prestigious Xenith Training Camp for field sports.

Honeybees buzzed in the summer clover and the crowd murmured behind her. She licked her lips, fingers straining against the bowstrings. Squinting down the sight, she aimed at the tiny golden circle in the middle of the target.

As always, her gut told her the exact moment to let go, and she released her grip. Over her pounding heart, she heard the arrow’s familiar whistling sound. A silver streak in the bright afternoon sun – then, as if drawn by a magnet, the arrow struck the bullseye with a satisfying thunk.

A girl’s voice rang out above the screams of the crowd. Sam turned to see her older sister, Abby, darting across the field. She was still wearing her white fencing uniform. The first place medal she’d won earlier bounced against her chest, flashing gold in the sun.

Sam ran to meet her. “We’re in.” She threw her arms around her sister.

“Yeah!” Abby jumped up and down, pulling Sam with her. “We get to be with Mum. We’re the best in Salem. We could be the best in the world!” She whipped her long, blonde hair behind her head. “Let’s find Dad.”

Sam and Abby pushed their way through the crowd, acknowledging good wishes on all sides. A judge slipped a medal just like Abby’s around Sam’s neck, and the weight of it felt wonderful – the weight of success. Sam’s teammates hugged her so tightly that even the three bands she’d wrapped around her dark curls weren’t enough to keep them under control. They popped out all around her face in a messy halo.

Sam laughed, fighting her way out of their embrace. “I can’t breathe.” She tried to gather her hair back but soon gave up. Who cared what she’d look like in the photos, anyway. She was going to Xenith, where the best athletes in the world prepared for the Olympics. And Mum would be there.

Finally, Sam spied their father standing alone at the edge of the field. “There he is.”

They scrambled over to him.

“We made it,” Abby crowed, grabbing his arm. “We’re following in your footsteps, Dad.”

“Congratulations, girls.” Their father smiled at them, but only with his lips. Behind his wire rimmed glasses, his gray eyes looked sad. Sam’s heart deflated. She knew why. Mum.

Abby must’ve caught on too, because she linked her arm through his and rested her head on his shoulder. “You’ll come too, right?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, but then he smiled again and this time it looked genuine. “Of course. I’ll arrange a sabbatical. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He brightened. “I’m thirsty. And how do we celebrate after winning?”

Sam laughed. “Three fresh-squeezed lemonades coming on the double.” She hugged him, breathing in the clean scent of his aftershave. His jacket button pressed into her face. She’d been only five when her parents divorced, and she’d probably never know the details. But now that they were going back to Fletching, the town where Xenith was located and where their mother still lived… well, maybe her parents could put the past behind them and their lives back together again. After all, it had been eight years.

“Hurry back, the photographers are here.” Abby finger-combed her hair and adjusted her collar so her medal shone in the sun.

“Will do.” Sam ducked around folding chairs and small clusters of spectators, looking for Mr. Scott’s lemonade stand, which was always somewhere at these tournaments. The smell of popcorn drifted by and made her thirstier. She craned her neck. Where was it?

“Good work, Samantha,” said a deep voice behind her. She spun around. A tall, very thin man was standing there, smiling uncertainly. His closely cropped silver hair contrasted sharply with his unlined face. His hands holding the program trembled.

“Um, okay, thanks.” She was well known in the community. Surely, that must be how he knew her name. “Have we met?” He didn’t look familiar to her at all.

“Not since a long time ago.” The man studied her face, then took a step toward her and held out his hand. “I’m-”

“Sam, over here!” Her father thundered. “The stand’s over here!”

The man’s face twisted into a grimace, and he turned on his heel. He strode away so fast it seemed like he’d simply vanished. Sam blinked and looked around. Everyone was acting exactly as they had before, like nothing unusual had happened. She shook her head. He’d probably just seen her name in the program and wanted to talk to her. It happened all the time with fans.

“We got the lemonade!” Abby yelled. “Get over here, it’s photo time.”

Sam shook off her jitters and pushed her way back through the throngs of people. Her father and Abby were talking to a woman wearing a crisp blue suit and carrying a professional-looking digital camera.

“Ah,” she said when she spied Sam. “How wonderful. The Liffey sisters, winning again – what a headline for the Daily. Our own future Olympians. How about you stand in front of the high school sign?” She pointed.

Sam and Abby strutted over to the sign and put their arms around each other. Sam smiled into the camera, forgetting all about the strange man. She’d never felt so happy in all her life.

***
Later that night, they sat around the dining room table. Sam picked at the last slice of pizza, wishing she wasn’t too full to eat it. Her medal lay on the table, its blue band intertwined with Abby’s as though in an embrace.

“So, when can we go?” Abby asked for the hundredth time, drumming her fingernails on the table and jiggling her knee up and down. Sam hoped her sister wasn’t going to get snitty with their father – it happened too often lately now that Abby was fourteen and thought she knew everything.

Their father took a long drink of soda and took his time swallowing it. “Soon,” he said vaguely.

Sam didn’t remember moving to Salem, and for the first six or so years of their parents’ divorce, Mum had visited them once a month. Her visits had been woven into the fabric of their lives, unquestioned, like how you get up, eat breakfast and head out to school every day. But then she came once every two months, then once every three. This year, she’d only visited them once, and here it was August. They’d never visited her.

“Would we have to go to school?” asked Abby. Sam could tell her sister was hoping the answer would be no.

Their father smiled. “Of course. You’d go to the local school, Fletching Academy. It’s right on the grounds. Most of the kids who go there are also in Xenith.”

“Oh,” said Abby, and she slouched back in her seat.

“How do we get there?” Sam asked. She had faint but happy memories of Fletching. She’d had two good friends there, identical twins named Eli and Jonah. She wondered if they were still there. Wherever “there” was – she’d never seen it on a map.

Their father tugged at one of his earlobes. “How do you get there… well, it’s complicated.”

“Why don’t we catch a plane like Mum?” Abby furrowed her brow.

Their father shook his head slowly, as though chasing away a thought. “That’s not how it’s done.”

“What does she do, teleport?” Sam fought a chuckle as she pictured her mum vanishing, bit by bit, like a Star Trek character.

“Not exactly,” replied their father, running his hands through his light brown, wavy hair. He took his glasses off and rubbed his thumb over his nose.

Abby dropped her glass on the table with a thud. “Why are you being so weird, Dad? Whenever she came you went and got her at the airport.”

Sam shot her sister a glare. She didn’t want to deal with an argument, not on their glorious day. She wished Abby wasn’t so impatient and that she held her tongue better when she was mad. But that was how her sister had always been.

Their father stared at the wall for a moment. “I suppose you girls are old enough to know some things.” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully, like someone picking through rotten fruit at the grocery store, trying to find something useful. “How much do you remember about Fletching?”

“Not much,” admitted Sam. “I remember those twins and going down to the beach in the summertime. Mum was always practicing archery so it was just us.” Sam had loved those days by the water with the twins. Once, her precious stuffed bunny Sunny had gotten caught in the tide and Eli dove in to rescue her, even though it was dangerous. His mother and father shouted up a storm, despite the fact they were champion swimmers and had taught Eli themselves. Once they stopped yelling, Sam had given Eli a hug. She hoped he was still there.

“Yeah, your mum really wanted that gold medal.” Their father jolted Sam back into the present. “Too bad she never got it. But she tried hard, that’s the important thing.”

“We’ll get it for her,” Abby said, touching her medal. “She’ll be proud of us.” She sat up straight in her chair. “It’s the best training in the world, isn’t it, Dad?”

Their father nodded. “It’s a pretty special place. Heck, it almost got me the world championship.” He took a deep breath. “I’m about to let you in on a secret, so listen carefully. You see, Dr. Benjamin Nine, the president, discovered how to make gold some years back. It’s how they fund Xenith.”

“Wow,” said Sam. She leaned forward. What a weird name. Plus, she’d never heard of such a thing, except in some magic books. “Really?”

Abby seemed skeptical. “Impossible, Dad. No one can do that.”

“It’s fantastical, but it’s true,” said their father. “And it’s pretty amazing. Dr. Nine’s a genius alchemist. He’d been working on it for years, and then he figured it out. But he doesn’t tell anyone the secret, mind you, so don’t go snooping around.”

Abby shook her head. “This makes no sense, Dad.” She played with her napkin, watching him like a hawk. Sam could tell that even though her sister was doubtful, she wanted to believe this fantastic story as much as Sam did.

“Dad wouldn’t lie to us, Abby,” she said.

“I don’t think I can explain this to you in a way you can understand,” their father said softly. He stood up, almost knocking his chair over in the process. He gripped the edge of the table, and Sam noticed his knuckles were white. “All I can do is show you. I can take you there tonight.”

Sam and Abby leaped to their feet.

“Seriously?” Abby squealed, grabbing Sam around the shoulders in a big hug. “Does Mum know?”

Their father shook his head. “No. But she’ll be happy for the surprise. Go upstairs and pack your things. Remember your sports gear. Meet me in my study when you’re ready.”

“Yay!” Abby shouted, pulling away from Sam. She pushed her chair into the table with a bang and her medal slipped away from Sam’s, falling to the floor in a whirl of gold and blue.

***
Upstairs, Sam threw some jeans, shirts, socks and underwear into her backpack, then ran to the bathroom and grabbed her toiletries. She jammed them all in with her clothes and looked around. If Eli was still in Fletching, she’d love to show him she’d kept Sunny all these years. Spying a small foot sticking out from under her bed, she giggled. She snatched the bunny and shoved her in on top of everything else, then pulled the straining zipper closed. She caught up her quiver and bow and darted into the hallway, where she almost crashed into Abby.

“Isn’t this exciting?” Abby danced around, her hair flying everywhere. “We’re finally going back, and this time to Xenith, too, just like Mum and Dad. I wonder what it looks like now.”

Sam could still smell the pine trees and the summer grass, and see the stone cabin where their parents had lived in the woods. It had been beautiful.

Abby waved her hand in front of Sam’s face. “Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?”

Sam laughed. “Sorry. I was thinking about the last time we were there.”

“I know.” Abby picked up her bag in one hand and her long, silvery foil in the other. “I can’t wait to get back.”

“Well, let’s go.” Sam ran down the stairs. She didn’t know how they were going to get there tonight, but she didn’t much care. One thing she did know: Xenith produced more Olympians than any other training facility in the world. And even that paled to having her whole family in one place for the first time in eight years. All thanks to archery. After checking to be sure Abby wasn’t looking, she kissed her bow.

A sliver of light from the partly open door to their father’s study lay on the wall of the hallway. They headed toward it, Sam’s bow and quiver bouncing as she walked. Her stomach tensed. The Xenith kids would be in a whole new league. They were the best in the world. Would she measure up? Or would she let her father down, embarrass him in front of their mother?

Inside his cavernous study, their father was sitting behind his mahogany desk. The messy stacks of books all around him made him seem oddly dwarfed, even powerless.

When he saw them, he smiled grimly and clicked off the lamp. “Well, this is it.” He pulled a chain from under his shirt. On it was a tiny silver key. He pushed himself up and walked across the room like an old man, wearily and slowly, as though life has pressed him down. Sam gripped Abby’s hand. It was damp, but she didn’t let go.

Their father twisted one of his old fencing trophies and Sam nearly fell backward as the bookcase slid open with a hiss to reveal a second, smaller room. It was like something out of a spy movie, but in her own house. She clutched Abby’s hand as if it could save her from drowning. Nothing was normal about this.

Their father reached inside the room and turned on a light. The room was tiny, more like a walk-in closet, and was nearly completely filled by an ancient, busted up black trunk.

“What is this?” Sam whispered to Abby, shuffling closer to her.

“I have no idea.” Abby’s voice trembled. “I’ve never been in here before.”

“Come here,” their father said in a solemn voice, gesturing toward the trunk. “I don’t want you to be too alarmed by what happens next, so stand behind me. Take a deep breath, and get ready.”

Slowly, he slid the key into the lock on the trunk. He shifted it back and forth a few times, and with a dull snap the lid parted with the bottom. Dust filled the air as he opened it all the way with a screech. Sam coughed as a vile scent like rotting leaves hit her nostrils. Whatever this was, it was disgusting for sure, and she couldn’t see what it had to do with Xenith. Maybe he was about to give her some kind of enchanted bow and arrow. Or a talisman. Something to prove they were good enough. But they’d shown that already, today at the match.

Their father turned, his glasses gray with dust, obscuring his eyes. “Come closer,” he whispered. For the first time in her life, Sam felt afraid of him. But she edged forward, still gripping Abby’s hand. When they reached him, their father stepped aside to let them see inside the trunk.

On a maroon velvet cloth, a skull with deep-cut, glowing red eyes and diamond-like teeth lay next to a golden necklace with a blood colored charm. Something was weird about them – they seemed alive, or like something was alive inside them. She shook her head. What a ridiculous thought. She stole a glance at her sister and saw Abby was transfixed, staring at the skull.

Their father reached into the trunk, and Sam bit back a protest – for a second, she’d imagined the skull would attack him. But nothing happened. He moved the skull and the charm out of the way and pulled up the cloth.

Underneath, a yellowed doll lay wrapped in a cloth of gold. Their father picked it up, unwrapped it, and winced. It had messy, black hair that fell to its waist. It wore monk’s robes, tied at the waist with a rope. Its round, black eyes were set above a nose so crumbled and misshapen it could hardly be called a nose at all. Instead of a mouth, it had a crude, red slash.

I know him.The thought came to her out of nowhere. Ridiculous. She’d never seen it before in her life, and anyway, how could she know a doll? That moldy smell… it was making her feel drugged.

The doll winked at her.

Her skin crawled as she stared at the doll. She ran her hand over her forehead and down her face. This doll was no Sunny, that was for sure.

It opened its gash of a mouth.

Abby screamed. Sam jumped to the side and her father steadied her.

Yellow teeth gleamed. “Hello, Samantha. Hi, Abigail. And Mr. Liffey, of course. My… you’ve kept me waiting for a long, long time.”

Chapter Two – A Living Doll
*
Sam put her hands over her mouth and stared at her father. Of all the things she thought might be in that trunk, a talking doll was the last. Her father wasn’t a practical joker, but this couldn’t be real.

“Well, hello to you, too,” said the doll, standing up in a cloud of dust and peering over the edge of the trunk at Sam. “Where are your manners? Sure, I’m a bit rough looking – but I have been locked up for eight years. You wouldn’t look like a beauty queen either.”

“Wh-what are you?” Sam glanced at Abby’s pale, big-eyed face. If this was a hallucination, her sister was having one too.

“Wh-what are you?” mocked the doll. “Isn’t that kind of obvious? I’m a laughing, crying, moving, living doll. I can do everything you do… well, most of it anyway. I don’t, for example, use the bathroom. Thank goodness.” He tittered.

Sam frowned. Since when could dolls come to life? She thought of Sunny again. Maybe her bunny could be like the velveteen rabbit. She shook her head. Why was she thinking about such stupid things at a time like this?

The doll stretched his arms, his joints popping. “Ahh, that feels good. Too long in one position, you know?” He looked at Sam’s dad. “Mr. Liffey. Tut tut. Was keeping me under wraps part of the divorce agreement? Even so, you could’ve let me out every now and then.”

“What if the girls had found you?” their father retorted. “Given the circumstances…” His voice trailed off and he stared miserably at his feet.

Sam bit her lip. So, this had something to do with Mum and the divorce. But her mother had never said anything about a living doll either. Nice family secret: a wacko doll hidden in an old trunk in a secret room in her dad’s office. She sighed. Other people had barrels of money or famous ancestors. Not the Liffeys. They always had to be different.

The doll furrowed his tiny brow. “I suppose it was a sticky situation, to put it mildly.” His dark, beady eyes focused on Sam for a moment before turning back to her father.

Sam folded her arms across her chest defensively. “What’re you staring at me like that for?” Whenever people talked about her parents’ divorce, they always gave Sam the same odd look. Now she was getting it from this bizarre talking doll, too.

Abby put her hands on her hips. “Sam, not right now, for crying out loud. Dad, what exactly is this all about?”

The doll didn’t give their dad a chance to answer. “I’m William Poppet. But you can call me Will.” He grabbed the side of the trunk, lifted his body over it, and fell to the floor with a thump. Some of his dark hair came loose and floated about his head. “You wouldn’t remember me, naturally.”

Their father’s face turned ashen. “I’m sorry, Will. But that was part of the agreement. You knew that.”

“So you kept this doll a big secret. Why?” demanded Sam.

“I’d’ve thought you’d trust us a bit more than that,” Abby snapped. “Did you think we’d go blabbing to the neighbors? I mean, honestly. I can’t see them caring much about some freaky toy.”

The doll wagged his little index finger at Abby. “I’m no plaything, Missy. Do you see strings? Do you see batteries? Humans. Always limited. Everything has to fit into their little world.” Then his finger fell off and dropped to the ground with a clatter. Sam scrunched up her face. Gross. But at least he didn’t bleed.

“Ooooops.” Will picked up the finger with his other hand. “How embarrassing. You see what happens when you lock me up for so long? I’m falling apart here. You might want to grab the superglue if you don’t want my head to fall off next.”

Sam squirmed, her stomach twisting. This was too much. She darted over to her father and tugged on his arm. “What’s going on? Just tell us.”

Her dad wrapped his arm around her. “You know Xenith’s a special, secret place, right? Well, they have things like Will there. You’re too young to remember, but he brought you girls here when your mother and I ended our marriage. And he’s the only way to get back.”

Abby pushed between them. “I wouldn’t be too young to remember, Dad. But I don’t. And who could forget something as crazy as this? I’m not stupid.”

Sam wished her sister would be nicer, but she had to admit Abby was right. Sam might have been only five, but she was sure she’d have some recollection of something so weird. After all, more and more other details were coming back to her about Fletching, things she had previously thought were dreams. A storybook village at the top of a mountain. You rode a cable car down to the crystalline, jewel-like water as aqua as her sister’s eyes and as warm as a bath. It could change in an instant when a storm blew in, turning grey and angry and wild. She had loved it, even as a young child, for its moodiness and beauty. But she didn’t remember anything at all about magical, talking dolls.

Will chuckled. “Okay, you got us. We made the journey at three in the morning. You girls were passed out sleeping.”

Abby glared at him.

He raised his eyebrows. “What? Don’t you think if you saw me, you’d flip out at that age? It was for your own good.”

“True.” Their dad nodded. “We had to be careful. There are a lot of people in the world who would want to hurt us for the things that go on in Fletching. Like the gold making – everyone would want in on that. Having that technology creates danger. People will stop at nothing for the sake of greed.”

“Do you know anything about how they do it?” Sam asked.

Her father smiled. “They take just a tiny bit of your qi, your soul energy, when you’re initiated and at various other points during your time there. I don’t know how, but they make gold from it.”

“What?” Sam tore herself from her father’s grasp. She didn’t want anyone taking part of her soul. “No way I’m doing that!”

“It’s not a big deal, Sam,” her father responded. “I did it, so did your mum. Many times. They know how to use that energy, that pulse of your being, to make things happen. It’s sort of like electricity, but more special.”

Sam scowled. It sounded freakish to her, no matter what he said. Abby curled her lip.

Their dad seemed to notice their expressions. He smiled. “Don’t worry, girls. Qi gets replenished in forty-eight hours. It’s not like you get diminished by it or anything.”

“I thought it was blood that replenishes in forty-eight hours.” Abby studied his face skeptically.

“So does soul energy, according to Dr. Nine.” Will stretched. “Owww, every time I move a joint… well, anyway, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance again, misses Liffey, and while I’m loving hearing about my beautiful village and honorable school, we need to begin the work.” He headed over to where they stood, walking like an old person, stiff and with his arms out as though he might fall over. Bits of ragged clothing fell from his body. “Pick me up.”

Sam shrank back against her father. “Ewww, no.” She didn’t want to catch some horrible disease from this ancient doll. Who knew what kind of mold was growing on him?

Will scowled, holding his broken finger and tapping it on his chin. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s the only way I can recover. Gold’s not the only thing that needs qi.”

Sam tucked her hands under her armpits. No way was she giving anyone any of her soul, no matter what they said about it being replenished.

“I’ll do it.” Their father reached down and picked the doll up. As he brought Will close to Sam, she caught a faint but powerful rancid stench, like rotting potatoes. She pinched her nose, revolted. But when she breathed through her mouth she could taste the smell. She gagged and put her finger under her nose instead. Her coconut lime lotion helped to block the horrible stink.

Her dad took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and waited. The seconds hung heavily in the air. Sam tried to stand completely still, not wanting to mess up whatever was going on. Her father scrunched up his face and seemed to be making a huge effort to do something.

But nothing happened.

“It’s not working,” Will said in a peevish tone. “I think you’re all tapped out.”

Abby clenched her fists. “What exactly is supposed to happen here, may I ask?”

“Will needs more than I have to give.” Their dad frowned. “Sam, you have to take him. If you don’t, we won’t get to Fletching. Abby, you too.”

Abby pressed her lips together in a thin line. But she reached for the doll. Sam winced. She really, really wanted to go to Fletching. Maybe giving up some of her qi wouldn’t be so bad. And if Abby was willing… slowly, Sam reached down and grasped one of the strange doll’s small arms with the tip of her thumb and forefinger.

He felt cold at first, but after a moment a warm sensation slipped from her heart down her arm. Her head grew heavy and she closed her eyes. A dim memory – or was it a dream – teased her. A large stone pyramid. A room of gold. The dead. The Olympics. Blood…

Abby’s shriek shattered Sam’s vision.

Sam opened her eyes; her sister’s face was stark white and she looked as though she might faint. Sam felt dizzy and weak herself. She took in several deep breaths, choking a little on the dust that still floated around the room. “What just happened?” she spluttered.

“I saw terrible things… blood…” Abby whispered. Then she shrieked again and pointed at the doll with her free hand.
Chapter Three – A Cabin In A Tree
*
Will had changed. The moldy skin Sam had found so disgusting now lay taut against his face. His nose, still misshapen, was no longer crumbling, and his hands were whole. The monk’s outfit looked crisp and new, the rope tied smartly around his waist. A pleasant aroma like fresh lemon permeated the air.

Sam and Abby let go at the same time and Will fell to the floor with a grunt. But he smiled as he picked himself up. “Thank you, my misses. It is much appreciated.”

Sam shook her head. She had to be going crazy, having visions. Maybe they’d put her in a mental hospital. She took a few steps back, pulling Abby with her. “Dad, this is too freaky!”

“You’re not going crazy,” said Will with maddening calm. “You’re not seeing things at all. This is part of your heritage and history. It’s time you knew about it.”

Electricity ran up and down Sam’s spine. Had he read her mind? She was just thinking she was crazy, and then he said it. Maybe it was coincidence. It had to be coincidence. She needed it to be coincidence.

Their father pulled them into him. “Listen, I can explain this. But let’s just go to Fletching, now that Will’s strong enough. You’ll see your mother. It’ll make sense, I promise.”

The doll grinned. A mouthful of bright white teeth gleamed in the blinking florescent light. “The Baba Yaga has been waiting patiently these eight years.”

Sam moved as close to her father as possible. What kind of weird language was this? “What’s a Baba Yaga?”

Will hopped from foot to foot. “That’s Dr. Nine’s sister. She’s the chair of Fletching Academy. Get it? He runs the training camp, she runs the school. Lordy, how much your father has kept from you.”

“I did what I had to do. You know that.” Their father’s voice cracked and his arm sagged on Sam’s shoulder. A sharp pain cut through the confusion brewing in Sam’s heart; she hated to see her father sad. He’d never do anything to hurt her. He’d been there for everything – every lost match, every painful practice, every long drive. He’d held her hand when she was ill and put bandages on her bruises. She loved him with all her heart.

Will shrugged and said nothing.

“I don’t get what’s going on at all,” Abby said with a scowl. “Dad, you said Mum wanted to visit us here and we couldn’t go there. That we left Fletching for good, unless we got into Xenith.”

A muscle worked in her dad’s jaw. Sam knew she had to change the subject – and fast. “Mr. Poppet, can you get Mum and bring her here? We need to talk to her.”

“Will.” The doll chuckled. “Call me Will. I can’t bring her to you, but I can take you to her. You’ve been trained as well as possible here in Salem, but you’re not world class. There’s still so much to do! You can bring honor to your people and to your country with your talents. Dr. Nine will be most pleased with how far you’ve come and most interested in where you need to go.” He clapped his hands, the sound sharp in the small, dusty room. “We’re wasting time here. Tell them the deal.”

Their dad took a deep breath. When he spoke, his voice was steady. “Girls, you deserve this opportunity. I know it seems odd, but it’s truly the best training in the world. Just one thing: stay near me or your mum or another adult at all times and do not leave camp, town or school. Do not go wandering off by yourselves, ever. Is that clear?”

Sam hesitated. This sounded a bit dangerous. But then she pictured her bow and quiver, and her thoughts shifted as though a breeze had changed direction and taken them with it.

This was what she’d been training for her whole life. Up at 5 AM, then school, then more training. Never like the other kids, always working twice as hard, no time for video games or television. But she’d wanted it, wanted it like when you find something elemental in your being and know it belongs to you to shape and mold and let flourish. She was meant to be an Olympian. So what if this whole thing was a little, well, unusual? She trusted her father – trusted him completely. If he said this place was safe, then it was. And of course they would follow the rules.

Will suddenly leaped up and down in place. “Come on, already! Girls, it can’t be that bad if your mother’s there, right? You’ll be fine. And you girls’ll be good. Right?”

Sam nodded. Yes, overall, she was good. Sure, she’d snuck out of school a few times with her friends to get ice cream sodas at lunchtime, but that was nothing compared to what other eighth graders were doing. And her grades were all As. She even got an A+ in Honors Biology. She studied as hard as she practiced.

“Get your bags,” said their father, injecting a note of cheer into his voice. “You’re going to be thrilled. Remember, Xenith’s the gateway to the Olympics!”

“Come on, already!” Will jumped in place again. “I’ve been locked up way too long. I can’t take another five minutes in this place!” He rushed out the door and into the study.

“Go on,” said their dad, lifting his suitcase. “Follow him.”

Sam grabbed her bag and gear from the study. The doll was waiting for them at the end of the hallway, bouncing impatiently on his toes. He beckoned them out the back door and pointed toward the dark forest that stretched for miles past the gate at the end of their garden. The sun was setting beyond the trees and the evening was warm and humid. Somewhere, a lone robin sang a cheerful song that seemed like an affront to Sam’s apprehension.

“What’s back there?” she asked her father as Will scampered across their yard with surprising speed for his tiny size.

“You’ll see.” Her father shouldered his bag as they crossed the yard. Sam clutched her bow and quiver, her arm still aching from the match earlier that day. She’d been back in that forest thousands of times and had never seen anything unusual. Maybe they were going to have to walk all the way through it. She dreaded the thought – her feet ached, too.

The doll was waiting for them at the gate with a broad smile. “Watch and be amazed.” He pulled it open with a long, rusty squeal, and darted through.

Their dad paused, then stepped through the gate, leaves crunching under his feet. He gestured for Sam and Abby to follow. The temperature dropped a few degrees and Sam’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the dimmer light. A squirrel chattered at them from a nearby tree. Sam drew her bow closer. She didn’t like the woods in the evening. What seemed normal and cheerful during the day took on an eerie feel, like ghosts were hiding behind the trees, waiting to snatch her up and run away.

Will waved his arms in the air. With a rustling sound, the trees bent left and right as if pulled by ropes, forming a trail between them. Sam’s jaw dropped. What was this? She drew an arrow from her quiver and held it ready, just in case.

“Come on,” said the doll. Without looking back, he scampered down the newly formed trail.

“Dad, are you sure we should do this?” Abby asked, grasping her foil.

“Yes,” replied their father, his tone resolute. He straightened his back and held out his arms. “Just stay with me. Sam, put that arrow away.”

Sam did as he asked. She snuggled into his comforting grasp and together the three walked down the trail.

After a bit, Sam glanced over her shoulder. Behind them, the trees were springing back upright as though the invisible rope pulling them downward had been released. A great, howling wind stirred, causing leaves from the forest floor to whirl all around them. Sam’s hair came loose from her ponytail and whipped all around her face.

“Keep going,” said their dad, raising his voice to be heard above the wind. “It’s fine!”

Sam blinked as stirred-up dirt threatened to fly into her eyes. She hunched over and pressed against the wind, and it pushed back like a living thing. Through her narrowed gaze she could just make out the darkened form of the tiny doll ahead of them.

They went on, struggling to walk through tangled roots and slippery leaves. Sam wondered how this place had been there all these years, buried in the familiar forest of her childhood, never discovered.

Soon the trees vanished and a high, white fence bordered the trail instead. A jolt shot through Sam’s stomach: the fence was made of bones – human bones. Skulls with glowing eye sockets capped each post, casting eerie, reddish light onto the path. She huddled closer to her father, feeling his heart beating a rapid pulse. What kind of awful place was this?

“I don’t like this!” she shouted, the wind taking her voice so it was barely audible. Dust flew into her mouth and she spit it out.

“Just keep going!” Her dad yelled. “They won’t hurt you!”

Sam decided not to look at the fence. They stumbled along the path for what felt like miles, the relentless, roaring gale pounding more heavily on her body with every step she took. It seemed to be blowing right through her, wrapping around her insides like she had no skin. She wished she’d brought her down coat. Her already sore muscles ached even more as she fought to hold onto her bag and her equipment. She was certain the wind would blow her backward, right down the path, if it wasn’t for her father’s arm across her back. Then she’d be eaten by whatever demons lived in this wild place. She wondered how Will was moving so easily, tiny as he was.

Up ahead, Will came to an abrupt halt next to an old tree trunk in a small clearing. When they caught up with him the wind died out completely and stillness fell like a curtain. Sam held her breath.

The doll waved his hands in the air and sang a low, sweet melody.

Their dad pulled them closer. “Be brave. This is going to seem a bit strange.”

Sam barely had time to doubt anything would seem strange after what they’d just been through when a low rumbling broke the stillness. She clutched onto her father as the ground stirred beneath her feet. Under the grass, long lines like roots stretched away from the tree trunk, moving, shifting and shaking the ground.

Abby yelled as the tree trunk began to grow and widen. Will jumped back just in time. Higher and higher it grew until it was just about the height of a three-storey building. Branches sprang out all around the tree and stretched toward the sky. Leaves uncurled from the branches, covering them with a brilliant, emerald green. Sam squinted as the hazy outline of a cabin appeared among the leaves. Slowly, it became more solid until Sam could no longer see through it. With a popping sound, a chimney appeared among the leaves and a long line of smoke grew out of it.

Sam’s heart skipped a beat as Will went up to the tree. The doll lifted his hands, humming another capriccio, cheerful tune. A small, round door with a golden handle appeared in the tree’s bark.

Will turned to face them, the melody dying on his lips. “Welcome to the house of the Baba Yaga.”
Chapter Four – The Baba Yaga
*
Rubbing her neck, Sam stared up at the cabin in the tree. Light flickered in the small windows and she caught a mixed smell of wood smoke and lavender. She glanced back at the pathway, but it was gone. The fence had closed around them in a perfect circle. Her skin crawled at the sight of the skulls’ red eye sockets, still glowing red in the darkness. Her father let out a long sigh, but whether it was born of relief or fear she wasn’t sure.

“Well, come on,” said Will, opening the circular door in the tree. “No use dallying out here.”

Sam turned to her father. “Are we really going up there?

Will peered over his shoulder at her. “No, you’re just going to stand out here and Xenith’ll come to you.” He cackled. “Relax. You’re not gonna die.”

“It’ll be fine.” Sam’s father squeezed her hand, but his voice shook. The flames from the skulls cast shadows across his face, making his nose appear elongated and his eyes dark, incomprehensible. Sam swallowed. Maybe he was into some creepy cult. She’d heard of such things. But, no. She shook her head. She trusted him, though this was the most bizarre thing she’d ever experienced. He gave her a gentle push toward the door.

Sam stumbled over a root and her father caught her arm. “Careful,” he said, helping her pull her bag back on her shoulder. The root had a long, pointed toe on it, like that of a chicken.

Inside, an impossibly tight spiral staircase wound up the inside of the tree. Fiery torches on spikes stood every few feet along the handrail and smoke stung Sam’s eyes. Without a moment’s hesitation, Will clambered up the steps to a platform at the top. Then he hoisted himself onto the handrail and waved at them. “Hurry!” His voice echoed around the tree, as if a chorus of tiny dolls was yelling down at them.

“Go on,” encouraged her dad as Sam paused with her foot on the lowest step. “I’m right behind you.”

Sam let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Gripping the handrail, she climbed, hearing the soft footfalls of Abby and their father behind her. The staircase groaned as they went higher and higher. Sam fought to keep her head clear and willed herself not to look down. She’d never been a fan of heights. Three years ago they’d gone on holiday to Toronto, and up in the CN Tower Abby had jumped around on the glass floor, laughing, while Sam hovered in the corner trying not to puke.

When they finally reached the platform, Will hummed again. Another round door appeared and sprang open. He scampered inside, waving them to follow.

Sam forced her trembling legs to move, ducking to avoid the low overhang on the door, and entered a small room mostly filled by a large wooden table. A fire crackled merrily inside a stove, scenting the air with cedar. A pot bubbled and a wide assortment of dried herbs and flowers hung from the ceiling. Despite her nerves, Sam felt somewhat comforted. It was like a rustic cabin in the woods, not nearly as unfamiliar and scary as she had expected. As long as, of course, it didn’t fall out of the tree. Abby and their father crowded in behind her and she shifted to give them room. Abby’s hot breath hit the back of her neck.

“Who’s there? Declare yourself!” A man’s voice cut through the air.

Sam jumped, clutching her chest, and dropped her bag, bow and quiver. Her father stepped forward, pushing her behind him with Abby. His eyes were wide behind his glasses and he stared at a door on the opposite side of the room as if he could break it with his gaze.

The door burst open with a squeal. The metal tip of a pistol appeared, followed by a tall, silver-haired man. Sam yelped. He was the man she’d spoken to earlier at the competition. She ducked into Abby, trying to make herself as small and invisible as possible.

“Michael!” Their father put his arms out to the sides, shielding Sam and Abby. “Put down that gun. You idiot!”

Abby made a high-pitched mew like a kitten and pushed herself closer to their father. Sam peeked around him, her palms sweating.

The man’s gaze fell on Sam and his hand holding the gun fell to his side. He backed up against the wall. Sam dug her fingers into Abby’s arm, wanting to pull away from his stare, but was unable. Time hung, frozen and thick. Then the man dropped the gun to the ground with a clatter.

“You idiot!” Sam’s father yelled again, his skin mottled. “It could’ve gone off. What’s the matter with you? God, I could kill you… if you hurt my daughters… haven’t you done enough damage in your miserable life?” Sam and Abby stared at each other, astonished. Their father was always so gentle. He didn’t even kill insects; he sucked them up in a special bug wand and released them outside.

The man slid down the wall and grabbed the pistol with trembling fingers. His sleeve slipped back, revealing a white, jagged scar. Seeing Sam’s father’s gaze on it, he shook his sleeve down quickly and stood. “Believe me, if I knew you were coming tonight, I’d’ve left town.” He tucked the pistol into his belt and appeared to regain his composure. “Well, Daniel, you’re back. After the competition, I can’t say I wasn’t expecting it. But I thought you’d wait a bit. Or send notice.”

He and Sam’s father glared at each other with a dislike so intense it was palpable – foul, stagnant and heavy like the air in summer before a thunderstorm.

Will jumped out in front of their dad. “Michael, I brought the girls. As you know, they qualified for Xenith.” He raised a finger as if in warning.

The man cleared his throat. “Yes. I saw the competition. It’s Samantha… Liffey, is it?” His mouth opened and closed; he seemed to be fighting some internal force. “How – interesting – to finally meet you.”

Sam scowled. Anyone her dad hated, she hated too. “Who are you? Why’d you come to my match?” She knew she was being rude, but she noticed her father said nothing – usually he would upbraid her for being impolite to a stranger. But this man was clearly no stranger. He was an enemy.

“I’m Dr. Michael Erik Dante.” The man spoke slowly. “You can call me – Dr. Dante, I guess. Through I think-” He stopped talking as though someone had flipped a switch.

Sam felt small under his stare, so she pulled Abby out from behind her father. Safety in numbers. “This is my sister, Abby.”

Dr. Dante grunted, keeping his eyes on Sam. He seemed to be examining every feature on her face. “You look like your mother,” he said finally.

Sam squirmed, wishing he would look somewhere else or, even better, that he’d go away completely.

“They’re going to be champions, like their parents,” Will piped in. He seemed to be trying to dispel the tension. “If I’d known you two were going to act like teenagers, I’d’ve sent a warning, though.”

Dr. Dante heaved a sigh. “It’s not like they wouldn’t run into me eventually. Fletching’s not exactly New York City.” He laughed, but it sounded high and false.

Sam’s father put his arm around her shoulders, his nostrils flaring. “Don’t forget our deal. Don’t you ever approach her again. That was some trick, sneaking into the competition.”

Dr. Dante flinched. “You can’t deny me -”

“I can deny you anything I want.” Sam’s father snarled. His arm tightened on Sam’s shoulder, mashing her face into his coat. She had to fight to breathe. “Don’t push me on this. You know what I can do.”

Sam’s palms began to sweat again. Her dad never talked like this. He was always so gentle and kind. Even when their teenage neighbors back in Salem had sideswiped his car, he’d been calm. And he’d never yelled at her or Abby in their whole lives, no matter how bad they were.

Dr. Dante again seemed at a loss for words, and if Sam hadn’t decided to hate him she might have felt a little sorry for him. His hand moved to the pistol in his belt, tightened on the handle, and then released. “I know,” he said in a low voice. “God, do I know what you can do. But a devil’s bargain, when anyone can see -”

The door creaked open and Dr. Dante stopped speaking. A tiny, ancient looking woman with a hooked nose walked in. She wore a purple cloak that draped over her head and fell to her feet. It was clasped in front with a skull-shaped pin. She carried a wooden staff but didn’t seem to need it for her step was spry and lilting. Bangles and bracelets hung on her arms. She smiled and hurried across the room.

“Daniel,” she said warmly, hugging Sam’s father. “I’m so glad you’re here. I knew you’d put them first.” She touched Abby’s chin. “Ta, a beautiful young lady you are. You’re so like your father.” She reached out and embraced Sam. “And this is Samantha. Girls, I am the Baba Yaga.” She smiled again, revealing crooked yellow teeth, one missing from the front.

Sam thought she should be scared of this tiny, ugly old woman, but she wasn’t. She looked like the witches Sam had read about in fairy tales, but she didn’t seem wicked at all.

The old woman turned to Dr. Dante. “I shall expect better from you in the future. Drawing your weapon on a pair of young girls. And you’re an Elder.” She clicked her tongue.

Sam gaped. “How did you know he did that?”

The Baba Yaga’s eyes twinkled. “I have a helpful little friend. Who I am so very happy to see again.” At this, Will puffed with pride and grinned widely. Sam was amazed. Apparently, the doll and the Baba Yaga could communicate telepathically.

Dr. Dante folded his arms. “I had no idea who they were. All I heard were intruders. I was protecting your home, and Xenith.”

“Always so impulsive. That’s your downfall.” The Baba Yaga tapped her foot. “It’s gotten you into a peck of trouble and you’ve not learned a thing. At the very least, understand I do not need your protection.” She smiled ruefully at Sam and Abby. “I’m sorry you had such a poor welcome to my home. From here on out, I hope you will be comfortable.” She gestured toward the table. “Sit. Let me fix you a snack.”

Will bobbed over. The Baba Yaga picked him up and gave him a big hug. “It’s nice to have you back.” She glanced at Sam’s father. Her mouth twitched like she was going to say something, but she didn’t.

Dr. Dante dropped into a chair at the end of the table. He pulled a pipe from his pocket and lit it on the candle. Sam, Abby and their father took seats as far away from him as possible. Their dad adjusted his chair so it was facing away from the man, as if looking at him was distasteful. The Baba Yaga filled four bowls with stew and brought them over on a wooden tray along with tumblers of cider. She sat in the remaining chair and Will clambered into her lap.

Sam stirred her stew, inhaling the delicious smell of venison and potatoes. But she was too nervous to eat. She pictured Fletching again as she remembered it. It had definitely felt modern, unlike this cabin, which seemed like something from the frontier days. Like Laura Ingalls Wilder, but in a tree.

“When do we start training?” Abby demanded, also not touching her stew. “I don’t want to lose a minute.”

“As soon as you’re initiated, my dear,” replied the Baba Yaga. “Which will happen tonight. You can start your training tomorrow.”

“Great.” Abby leaned closer to the old woman, her blue eyes eager. “So where’s Mum? I want to see her, now.”

Sam dropped her spoon. Abby was being pushy, but Sam wanted to see their mother too. The question was, how to do it without upsetting their father – usually when their mother visited in Salem, he disappeared into his study so he wouldn’t have to see her. It used to hurt Sam when they acted like that, but she’d grown accustomed to it over the years.

The Baba Yaga took a drink of cider, her brow furrowed. “We’ll get her after you eat, how about that? Daniel, would you like to speak with her alone before she meets with the girls?” Her tone seemed laced with meaning, and Sam’s father nodded, seemingly catching the unspoken message.

He pushed away his bowl. “Honestly, I’m not hungry, Baba. Can we go get this over with?”

The Baba Yaga smiled sadly. “Yes, certainly, dear.” She stood.

Dr. Dante jumped to his feet. “I’ve got something to say to Emma, too.”

Sam’s father slammed his fist on the table, making Sam flinch. “No you don’t. Not now.”

“Michael, stay here.” The Baba Yaga’s voice was harsh, like sandpaper. “Control yourself.”

Dr. Dante fell back as if pushed.

Sam’s father hesitated, his hand on the back of Sam’s chair and his gaze fixed on Dr. Dante’s face. “Give me your pistol.”

“What?” Dr. Dante seemed stunned.

“I said, give me your pistol. I’ll not leave you armed with my girls.” Her father stretched out his hand.

“Give it to him.” The Baba Yaga tapped her cane on the ground. “He has that right.”

“I wouldn’t-” Dr. Dante began, clearly affronted, but Will cut in.

“Michael Dante, you’re a fool. A fool!” The doll hopped over to him. “You know he’s got a right, Mister Usurper.”

Dr. Dante passed a shaking hand over his eyes, then took the pistol from his belt and handed it to the doll. “Take it,” he said bitterly. “Why not, Daniel, you got everything else.”

“Liar.” Sam’s father spoke flatly. “You took more from me than I could ever take from you.”

Will gave Sam’s father the pistol. Sam caught her breath as he pointed it at Dr. Dante, closing one eye. But he didn’t take the safety off and after a minute he stuck it in his belt. “Will stays. And you remember our deal.”

Dr. Dante gave a curt nod. Sam’s father gave her a brief pat on the back and then headed out the door with the Baba Yaga at his heels.

Bewildered, Sam met Abby’s eyes. Never in a million years would she have imagined her father was capable of pointing a gun at someone. Abby shrugged, looking as stunned as Sam felt. Sam twisted her hair. She didn’t know if she wanted to figure out what was going on. Something about it made her deeply uneasy.

Dr. Dante took a long drag from his pipe and blew it out, filling the room with the scent of rum-flavored tobacco. He stared at Abby, one eyebrow raised and his eyes glittering with malevolence.

Sam adjusted her back in the hard wooden chair. More to avoid having to talk than for actual hunger, she took a bite of the rich stew and choked it down. She looked around the room. No television, no stereo, no computer in sight. Just a thatched rug and a tiny tabby cat curled up on a quilt-covered rocking chair. It stretched, yawned, then lightly kneaded the cushion and settled back down to sleep.

Curiosity overwhelmed Sam’s fear. “I thought you had electricity. I thought this place was modern.”

“Of course we are,” said Dr. Dante. “Baba wishes to live without it, close to the earth. Or something like that.”

“It keeps her connected to the natural and spiritual.” Will grinned. “Like me.”

Abby smirked. “Must be pretty boring.”

“Baba has more important ways to fill her time than by watching television or playing video games,” Dr. Dante said with a sneer. “You’re such a child of entertainment, coddled from the minute you’re born. You can’t even think of more important things.”

“I can think of plenty,” snapped Abby. “We don’t exactly come from the middle of nowhere.”

Dr. Dante glowered at her. “Just like your father.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sam sat up straight in her chair. She wasn’t going to let this awful man insult her father and sister. No one got away with that.

“Your sister is like your father,” Dr. Dante spat. “Everything handed to her. Rich.”

“Ach, Michael.” Will groaned. “Hush, for once in your life. The girls did grow up in the same house. You recognize that, right?”

Sam’s fists clenched. “Our dad has money because he’s a great professor. He even has tenure.”

Dr. Dante sat back in his chair. “Rich is a state of mind. Your sister and your father’s state of mind, to be more precise. Privileged. You’re different.”

“What are you talking about?” Abby lost control and banged her tumbler down on the table. “You just met us!”

Dr. Dante rolled his eyes and said nothing.

Will cocked his head to the side. “Michael, give it a rest. Show us you’re a man, eh?”

Sam opened her mouth but before she could say anything the door creaked open again. Her heart quickened – her mother? But a boy was standing in the doorway. Tall and reedy, he wasn’t exactly handsome. But he had an incredibly interesting face, with the high cheekbones, dark skin and black eyes of his Kenyan ancestors.

Sam jumped to her feet and covered her mouth.

He was Eli – Elijah Fawke, her childhood friend, rescuer of Sunny the stuffed rabbit, grown now. But she’d know him no matter how many years separated their contact, know him in a way she could never explain. Just as she knew he was Eli and not his twin Jonah, despite them being identical. Would he remember her?

Her legs trembled and she forgot all about Dr. Dante, the pistol, and even Abby. “Eli.” Her voice came out in a croak.

He moved across the room and for a heart-stopping moment Sam thought he would hug her, but instead he held out his hand. She took it. It felt warm and soft.

“I ran into your father,” Eli said, gripping her hand. “He said you were here, so I came as quickly as I could. I can’t believe it, after all this time. Do you still have that rabbit?”

Sam’s heart thumped in her chest and with her free hand she pointed at her bag. “She’s over there.” She had missed him and hadn’t even realized it until now. He had been her earliest, dearest friend – the only person who seemed to get her, even when they were so young. And he remembered Sunny.

“And here I thought you might not recognize each other.” Will chortled. “Guess I was wrong on that count.”

“You can let go of her hand now,” said Abby in an amused tone. She came around the table and grinned at Eli. “Nice to see you again. Where’s Jonah?”

Eli dropped Sam’s hand like a hot potato and the color drained from his face.

“Jonah went out exploring on his own in places he was not authorized to go.” Dr. Dante stood and pushed his chair in with a scrape. “He was kidnapped two years ago and we haven’t seen hide nor tail of him since. So it would behoove you to keep in mind Fletching can be a very dangerous place.”

And with that, he stormed out of the room, leaving a cloud of acrid smoke in his wake.

 

… continued …

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Qi (Book of the Baba Yaga) on Kindle for just 99 cents!

 

by Elizabeth A. Svigar
Kindle Edition ~ Release Date: 2010-10-31

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by Elizabeth A. Svigar
Kindle Edition ~ Release Date: 2010-10-31

List Price: $0.99

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Free Kindle Nation Shorts — March 10, 2011: An Excerpt from The Big Wake-Up, “An August Riordan Mystery” by Mark Coggins

Are you ready for some smart, sexy, stylish, hard-boiled fun?
Wisecracking San Francisco PI August Riordan parlays a run-in with a machine-gun-toting cable-car brakeman into a guided tour of the city’s cemeteries, hunting for … wait for it … Evita Peron’s perfectly preserved corpse. His deadly cat-and-mouse game involves surviving both the murderous intentions of some shady members of Argentina’s ruling class and the seductive advances of several beautiful Latin American women.

By Stephen Windwalker
Editor, Kindle Nation Daily
©Kindle Nation Daily 2011
 

The Big Wake-Up

Do you miss the late Robert B. Parker and his Spenser novels?
Me, too. In fact, if you’re like me, you may not be above going back and reading some of the best Spensers a second or third time. There’s no shame in that, really.
But sooner or later we have to move on, and I’m here to propose what the helping professions sometimes call a geographical cure.
How about a trip across the country?
Fly first class, and it will only cost you $2.99 a trip. Because I’m going to introduce you to a new friend, August Riordan, a San Francisco Shamus who is every bit as funny, as august, and as tough an Everyman PI as his Boston counterpart Spenser.
Where to begin? Novelist Mark Coggins makes it easy for us by providing an action-packed 13,000-word free excerpt for us right from the beginning of The Big Wake-Up, the fifth book in the Riordan series.
If you’re enough of a suspense fiction fan to begin reading the free excerpt, I’m pretty sure you’ll keep going right to the end of this novel, and then it’s up to you. You can go 5-4-3-2-1, or you can go 5-1-2-3-4, it doesn’t matter.
But don’t be surprised if by the time you finish all five you’ll be asking me for Coggins’ email address so you can write to him begging him to put on some speed in delivering #6….
Here’s the set-up:
The odyssey of María Eva Duarte de Perón–the Argentine first lady made famous in the play and the movie Evita–was as remarkable in death as it was in life. A few years after she succumbed to cervical cancer, her specially preserved body was taken by the military dictatorship that succeeded her deposed husband Juan. Hidden for sixteen years in Italy in a crypt under a false name, she was eventually exhumed and returned to Buenos Aires to be buried in an underground tomb said to be secure enough to withstand a nuclear attack. 

Or was she?

When San Francisco private eye August Riordan engages in a flirtation with a beautiful university student from Buenos Aires, he witnesses her death in a tragic shooting and is drawn into mad hunt for Evita’s remains. He needs all of his wits, his network of friends and associates, and an unexpected legacy from the dead father he has never known to help him survive the deadly intrigue between powerful Argentine movers and shakers, ex-military men, and a mysterious woman named Isis who is expert in ancient techniques of mummification.

The fifth novel in the August Riordan series, The Big Wake-Up plunges everyman PI Riordan and his sidekick Chris Duckworth into their most terrifying and anguishing case ever.

From Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review):

Coggins’s outstanding fifth mystery to feature San Francisco PI August Riordan (after 2007’s Runoff) successfully blends an over-the-top premise with an unrelentingly grim plot. Soon after flirting with an attractive young woman in a Laundromat, Riordan watches in horror as an apparently deranged cable car operator guns her and an older woman down at a cable car stop. Riordan pursues the killer and stops his bloody rampage. The Argentine family of the first victim, 23-year-old Araceli Rivero, hires him to investigate an unrelated matter, the location of Araceli’s dead aunt, whose body was transferred from a Milan cemetery to somewhere in the Bay Area. After quickly getting a promising lead, Riordan learns that his clients have been less than straight with him-the missing corpse is actually that of Evita Perón. Coggins pulls no punches as the suspenseful action builds to a violent act of vigilantism.

 

(August Riordan Series)
 
by Mark Coggins
Kindle Edition

List Price: $2.99

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Six for the Kindle by Mark Coggins
  
6.
Free Kindle Nation Shorts – March 10, 2011
An Excerpt from
The Big Wake-Up
“An August Riordan Mystery”
 by Mark Coggins
Copyright © 2011 by Mark Coggins and published here with his permission

Cable Car Crunch

ARE YOU HOPING FOR A SOUVENIR or checking to see if they’re your size?”
The woman doing the talking was holding a towering stack of pastel-colored panties. We were the only two in the Missing Sock Laundromat. I was there because doing my own laundry in the middle of the workday seemed the best investment I could make in my flagging private eye business. She was there-apparently-because even Victoria Secret underwear models have to do the wash.
There’s no question I’d been staring at her. I don’t usually associate tweed with sexy, but she’d shoehorned her extravagant curves into a vest and jacket made of the stuff and on her it was positively prurient. The jacket just came over her hips and then a pair of clingy jeans took charge and traveled the length of her long-stemmed legs to some pointy brown boots. Given the alternative between watching my Fantastic Four bedsheets go through the spin cycle and taking her in while she folded and stacked her unmentionables, the question of eyeball allegiance was never in doubt.
I sat up straighter in the plastic lawn chair I’d been camped in. “Doesn’t matter what size they are. They’re not my color.”
A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth and she leaned down to put the stack of panties in the nylon duffel bag at her feet. When she had them situated just so, she yanked the draw string closed and swung the bag over her shoulder. She flipped back apricot blond hair, then reached into the open dryer.
Mirth and green light shone in her eyes. She gestured for me to hold out my hand and pressed something warm and spongy into it. “Well, here’s your souvenir, then.”
A fabric softener sheet.
I laughed and watched as she plopped a tweed newsboy cap onto her head, collected an oversize umbrella from near the door and went out onto Hyde Street and a driving San Francisco rainstorm. She gave me a two-fingered wave through the plate glass and then jogged across the street to stand with an older woman at the cable car stop on the corner at Union in front of the Swensen’s ice cream parlor.
That particular Swensen’s was the original-opened in 1948 by Earle Swensen himself-and the promise of a couple of scoops of Cable Car Crunch after I finished my laundry was the main reason I picked this place over the laundromat in my apartment building. The pantie girl had been an unexpected plus.
Sighing, I pocketed the fabric softener sheet and let my gaze return to the bank of Speed Queens in front of me. The machine on the end was shaking violently due to my decision to throw a pair of dirty Converse Chuck Taylors in with my sheets. I moved to rebalance the load, then heard the deep, coffee grinder rumble of an approaching cable car. It pulled in front of the ice cream parlor, blocking my view of the girl and the older woman. It looked completely devoid of passengers and I thought how lucky the girl had been to catch an empty car so quickly.
I’ve never been more wrong in my life.
On sleepless nights, I can still see the next five seconds replay when I press my face into the pillow. The cable car seemed to pause on its tracks, there was a harsh unzippering noise synced to lightning flashes, and the car accelerated from the corner. By the time I thought to look to the gripman, his face was turned away from me, but I could just make out two pug-ugly Uzi machine guns dangling from leather straps that crisscrossed his chest. I yelled something inarticulate and plunged across the room to the door.
It was a short, drenching sprint to the cable car stop. The girl and the woman lay in a jumble with packages and bags in the gutter, their open umbrellas twitching and rocking in the rain like things possessed. There was no question of either being alive. The 9mm slugs had stitched a slashing line across faces and chests, and although there was relatively little bleeding, the damage was horrific. The older woman, in particular, simply had no forehead. The pantie girl had less damage to her face, but the tweed fabric of her vest was chewed to shreds and bright red arterial blood welled in shallow pools across her throat, sternum and breast. Both women peered up into the downpour with unblinking eyes.
The awful transformation from teasing, flirtatious girl to broken rag doll left me vapor locked. I didn’t know what to do. I sat on my haunches in the street, my hair plastered to my scalp, my fingers squeezed against my kneecaps, swaying from side to side. I might still be there if an aproned teenager hadn’t poked her head out the door of Swensen’s and let off a strangled scream.
I blinked, then blinked again. I squeegeed hair and water off my face with my palm and reached across to close the eyes of the dead women. By the time I stood up, the teenager had retreated into the store. She tried to block me from entering, but I bulled my way through to stand dripping on the tiled floor while she scampered back behind the ice cream freezer. “Go away,” she squeaked.
“Call 911,” I said. “Tell them that a gripman on the Hyde cable car line is shooting people with machine guns.”
Whatever response she made to that was lost in the sound of me flinging open the door again with the little bell attached to it caroming wildly off the glass. I ran across Hyde to the alley that bordered the laundromat. I had parked my 1968 Ford Galaxie 500 halfway on the sidewalk in an illegal spot near the corner. I dove onto the bench seat, shoved the key in the ignition and cranked the starter while I worked the gas pedal. The car shook while the starter turned, but the engine didn’t catch-an all too common occurrence with the Galaxie. I wrung the steering wheel in frustration, pumped the pedal some more and forced the starter into an extended series of arias. The engine still didn’t join the performance.
The smell of raw gasoline wafted into the car: flooded. Hissing a rosary of curses, I laid my hand flat on the dashboard in a kind of anti-blessing, pressed the gas peddle all the way to the floor and twisted the key. The Galaxie shimmied in an off-kilter rhythm, fired once, missed a beat, then fired again. Finally all the cylinders caught and the engine rumbled to life. A cloud of blue gray smoke that not even the driving rain could knock down billowed up behind me. I yanked the transmission into gear and jolted off the sidewalk in a squealing left turn onto Hyde.
The maximum speed of a cable car is ten miles per hour. That was still enough for the car I was chasing to travel six blocks to Washington where the tracks turned left to go down the hill to Powell. It was just making the turn as I gave the Galaxie all the gas I dared, winding the car up to 50 miles per hour by the time I hit the depression in the roadway where Hyde roofed the Broadway tunnel. The Galaxie bottomed out, scraping up yards of asphalt and swamping the aged shocks. We bucked in a seesaw oscillation that, combined with the fogged front windshield and the wheels slipping on the slickened steel of the cable car tracks, made controlling the car an iffy proposition at best.
The turn at Washington proved the point. I pressed the brakes to slow for it, but hydroplaned on the tracks. I torqued the wheel over anyway, provoking a skid that snapped the rear end wide and knocked over a scooter that was parked at the corner. I turned into the skid to regain control and side swiped two more autos. By the time I had fishtailed into the middle of Washington, the cable car had crossed Levenworth and was approaching the crest of the hill at Jones.
Then came the bullets. I had hoped the gripman would be unaware of my pursuit but the orchestra of crashes accompanying my turn must have alerted him. He swung wide out of the cable car, clinging to a white pole on the side while squeezing off a long, stuttering round from one of the Uzis. The slugs tattooed the hood of the Galaxie, then flew up into the windshield, chiseling a constellation of starburts in the glass. I tried to crawl into the dashboard ashtray, but flying glass sliced my right cheek before I could take cover.
The cable car rolled over the edge of the hill and the gripman lost his sight line. He swung back inside the car just as it slid from view.
Up until that point, the Galaxie had had little to recommend it as a pursuit vehicle. It was old, mechanically unreliable, hard to control and not particularly fast. All of that changed now. A two-ton hunk of 1960s Detroit iron makes an excellent guided missile.
I slapped the gearshift into low and tromped hard on the gas pedal. The rear wheels chirped and the car shot forward with a jolt that knocked more of the fractured glass from the windshield. In an instant, I was at the top of the hill. In another, I was sailing over it.
Any worry about how the shocks would handle another hard landing was misplaced. The Galaxie pancaked onto the back of the cable car-flattening the panel with the car number and the Rice-A-Roni ad-and firmly embedding the front end at a height that didn’t permit the wheels to touch the ground. My forehead punished the steering wheel, and by the time I unstuck my frontal lobe from the inside of my skull, we were barreling down Washington as a conjoined unit at a speed much greater than the nineteenth-century cable car designers had contemplated.
Not that the gripman wasn’t doing his damnedest to stop us. Plumes of sparks flew up from beneath the car where he’d employed the emergency break-basically a steel wedge that is crammed into the slot between the tracks-and I could smell and almost taste the acrid wood smoke coming off the old fashioned wooden track brakes. When the brakes didn’t seem to be working he resorted to the Uzi. Bullets nickered overhead, but I put a stop to that by tromping even harder on the gas.
We shot past Taylor and then Mason. I realized I had a death squeeze on the steering wheel even though there was no steering to be done and I was screaming at the top of my lungs. The tracks turned right abruptly at the next street-Powell-but I didn’t think we would be joining them.
There was a hard jolt at the intersection and I felt the cable car wrenching away from the Galaxie. My front wheels bounded onto the ground. The last thing I registered before slamming on the brakes and bracing myself for the inevitable was the cable car heeling over like a yacht-the grip beneath the car still attached to the cable, which was being pulled from its slot like a gigantic rubber band.
The back end of the Galaxie spun around to the left and I skidded kitty-corner across the intersection to broadside a street lamp, and when that didn’t hold, the storefront of a Chinese market. I heard the light pole crashing down, glass from the storefront shattering, and above it all, a tremendous snap and an awful whipping sound.
I rattled around the interior of the car like a bean in a rumba shaker. I must have lost consciousness for a moment because the next thing I remembered was the near zen-like sound of rain water dripping through the broken windshield onto the dash. Then a whispered, “Are you okay?”
Okay I was not. I sat up in the seat and immediately discovered about ten places where I hurt, including a stinger to my neck that made my left arm feel like it was on fire. Outside the driver’s side window, next to a store display of ceramic figurines, was the person inquiring about my health: an old Chinese man in a sweat suit and a Cal Berkeley baseball cap. The way out to the left was blocked, so I crawled across the seat, encrusting my knees with a mosaic of broken glass and ceramics as I went, and pushed open the passenger door. I lumbered out and stood on trembling legs by the base of the felled street light, transfixed by what I saw across the way.
“Hey,” said the Chinese guy, no longer whispering. “You smashed my store.”
I didn’t answer him because I had already broken into a shuffling, windmilling trot to get to the far corner. The cable car was flipped over on its side, part on the roadway and part on the sidewalk. The gripman was on his back in the street, lying parallel to the overturned car. As I got closer, I could see that he was alive and conscious, but given his injuries, I doubted he wanted to be either.
This was my first good look at him. He was young, red-haired, and probably had a last name that started with O’. He had a bandanna tied around his head that matched his brown SF Municipal Railway uniform, with a special cable car division insignia embroidered over his chest. I reluctantly abandoned my theory that he was a random crackpot who hijacked the car.
It was no theory that he was suffering. The skin on his face was so pale and so wet that it appeared almost translucent. His eyes were marbles of agony. He watched as I approached, then gasped, “I can’t feel my feet.”
I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. “That’s because you don’t have any.”
He nodded like I’d passed along a ball score, then closed his eyes. “The cable,” he mumbled.
“Yeah. The cable. But you won’t need your feet for the gurney ride to the lethal injection chamber. Now shut up while I save your miserable life.”
I yanked off my belt and leaned down to cinch it above his left knee as a makeshift tourniquet. The first cop car showed up as I was tugging at his belt for the other leg, my fingers slippery with blood.

A Universe of Stars, a Galaxie of Dents

THE GRIPMAN TURNED OUT TO BE A GUY named Darragh Finnegan, which is about as Irish a name as you can get without starting the last part with O’. He had been caught up in a sting involving undercover security guards who were put on cable cars to find crews pocketing fares from tourists. Finnegan and the conductor from his crew had been suspended for allegedly skimming over $25,000, his girlfriend had dumped him and-thanks to his high profile from press coverage-he was also under investigation by the INS for being in the country illegally. And he was pissed.
On the day of the shooting he donned his Muni uniform and met his old cable car at the second stop up from the turnaround at Beach Street. He shot and killed the replacement crew and three passengers who had waited in the rain to ride a cable car on a miserable February afternoon. Two of the three were tourists from Germany and the other was the undercover security guard who caught him skimming fares. Finnegan then rode the car to the stop across from Lombard-the “crookedest street in the world”-and critically wounded another tourist from Lawrence, Kansas. The next stop was the one in front of Swensen’s, where the two women waited.
The pantie girl’s name was Araceli Rivero. She was twenty-three, a native of Argentina, and was in the U.S. on a visa to study pharmacology at UCSF. The older woman was the organist at the New Korean Methodist Church and was known to her friends as “Snowflake.”
The only thing that wasn’t known was where exactly Finnegan managed to get hold of the machine guns. There were dark rumors about connections to the Irish Republican Army, but since Finnegan wasn’t talking the rumors came to naught.
That left yours truly. The cops weren’t exactly ready to pin any medals on me-I caused an estimated $100,000 worth of personal and municipal property damage for starters-but there was no denying that things would have been a whole lot worse if I hadn’t shown up. The cable car was due to pass through the popular Union Square shopping district, and rain or no rain, there were plenty more people in the line of fire. Finnegan was ready for them, too. A duffel bag full of loaded magazines was found dangling from one of the control levers of the wrecked car.
I got kicked loose from the Bryant Street station well after midnight. One of my few friends in the department-a lesbian beat cop-helped me sneak out the employee exit to avoid the feverish piranha school of reporters who were waiting to interview the only guy who could add a little color-if more color was needed-to tomorrow’s lead story: “SF Muni Gripman Goes Postal; Hijacks Cable Car for Death Tour.”
I shared a cab with a released prostitute who wanted to be dropped off on Polk near California. After the driver and I both politely declined to join her in a nearby alley for reduced cost favors, we continued to my apartment at the corner of Post and Hyde, where I promptly hid under the covers of my unmade bed and remained there for three days, not answering the phone or the door buzzer, or paying attention to the TV, the radio or the transmissions from Alpha Centauri that I sometimes received from the fillings on my back molars.
The thing that finally roused me was a pounding that sounded like someone using my apartment door for serve and volley practice. Theoretically it could only be a neighbor or the apartment manager since the lobby door was on a buzzer system, but the occasional wastrel had been known to make it through. I padded up to the door in my bathrobe and looked through the peep hole. I nodded to myself. It was one of the biggest wastrels I knew: Chris Duckworth.
Duckworth and I had met on a case several years ago, and although it surprised me to admit it, he had probably become my best friend. It surprised me because I doubted that in a hypothetical survey of our eHarmony “29 dimensions of compatibility” we would come up with a single match. Not that Chris would be allowed to use the service in the first place since, to quote one of the many pithy expressions he used to convey his sexual preference, he was “gay as a fondue fork.”
I slipped off the security chain, undid the locks and pulled open the door. He stood in the hallway with two packages carefully wrapped with butcher paper and string. He was slight man-barely five foot and a half-and the packages came up nearly to his chin. But to the casual observer, details about height and what he was carrying would hardly have rated a mention. What could not have gone unremarked was the fact that he was dressed as a French maid-a very sexy and convincingly female French maid.
“I didn’t ring for service,” I said with mock severity.
“There’s no service in this dump, much less a place to ring for it. I’m doing the early show at Aunt Charlie’s.”
Aunt Charlie’s Lounge had a drag queen revue where Chris sang torch songs under the stage name of Cassandra. I often played bass in the band that accompanied him. “Why are you here then?”
“I’m just checking to see if you’ve grown out your fingernails or started collecting your urine in jars.”
“Fingernails take time, but I’ve been doing the urine thing for years. It’s best to go with pickle jars because of the wide-“
“Spare me.”
“You started it. What’s in the packages?”
Chris sauntered into the room and dumped the packages on the folding card table I use for dining (if consuming TV dinners and burritos could properly be referred to as dining). He pulled off a cashmere top coat, folded it carefully and set it down on the arm of my ratty sofa. After brushing a few Oreo cookie crumbs from a cushion, he perched on the edge of it and surveyed the room. “I like how you’ve remained true to your original artistic vision. The bowling pin lamp, for instance, is a nice touch.”
“Yeah, well, the lava one fell off the cinder block.” I shoved the door closed and walked over to the card table. “So, what’s in the packages?”
“See for yourself.”
I yanked the cord off the top one and tore open the paper. A pair of Converse Chuck Taylors with new white laces were inside. My Chuck Taylors. The bottom one had my sheets and towels from the laundromat neatly folded and pressed. “Wow. You didn’t have to do that, Chris-but thank you. How’d you even know where to find them?”
He reached up to resettle the headpiece of his costume atop his blond wig. “Well, while you’ve been playing the Howard Hughes recluse, the rest of the world has been busy broadcasting stories about the ‘Cable Car Hero’-meaning you. Most of them mentioned that you were doing your laundry when the whole thing started. I found everything in a big pile on the folding table.” He looked down at his hands. “Did you really see those two women get killed?”
I slumped into one of the rickety chairs that went with the table and pushed the laundry to one side. “I couldn’t actually see it. The cable car was in the way. But it was certainly one of the worst experiences of my life. One second they were there, and the next they were lying on the ground. The arbitrariness of it was what got me. It reminded me of the Flitcraft story-only with a bad ending.”
“The Flitcraft story?”
“It’s a sort of parable from The Maltese Falcon. The point is that there is no master plan in the world. No karma. Your actions on this earth have no bearing on what happens to you.”
“Jeez, August, I didn’t realize we were going to be diving into metaphysics here. Is that why you’ve been holed up for the past three days?”
I picked at the wrapping paper from one of the packages, then forced a grin onto my face. “That, and I was waiting for the maid to bring me my damn laundry.”
Chris smiled back at me-more, I suspected, from relief at having the subject changed than amusement. “Well, it wasn’t just your laundry you abandoned, you know. And this maid can’t help you with it. You need a wrecker.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your car-or what’s left of it. They’ve got it at the impound lot. Gretchen told me they’re towing it to the junk yard unless you claim it by this afternoon. I didn’t think you’d care, but-“
I jumped up from the table. Gretchen was my admin, so they must have called my office when they didn’t get hold of me here. “Did you drive?”
“Y-e-s. I checked out one of those car share Priuses. Why?”
“You’re taking me to the impound lot. Hold on while I get changed.”
Chris started to say something about missing his rehearsal, but I closed the bedroom door on him before he could finish.
WE GOT TO THE IMPOUND lot just as the “Pick Your Part” tow truck was hooking up the Galaxie. I told the driver he wouldn’t be picking any of my parts and sent him and the Galaxie to Cesar’s Garage on Turk instead.
Cesar did a brisk business in fixing German makes that were out of warranty or whose owners refused to pay full boat for dealer repair. He’d arrived in San Francisco from Ecuador in 1971, penniless with almost no friends, but thanks to a burning sense of entrepreneurship, had worked his way up from a tiny two-man car repair shop to a multi-story garage that now occupied the whole block in the admittedly seedy Tenderloin neighborhood. Since my own apartment was right on the fringes of that same neighborhood, I rented a parking spot from him and used him for the limited amount of maintenance I saw fit to underwrite on the Galaxie.
It was late in the day and no one was at the customer entrance of the garage when we arrived. Chris barely managed a full stop, hustling me out of the Prius and humming the opening bars of “Falling in Love Again” under his breath before he yanked the door closed and sped off to Charlie’s.
The tow truck driver just chuckled as he lowered the Galaxie onto the concrete ramp. Both doors and both quarter panels on the left side were smashed, the hood was crumpled and the bumper was tied on with rope. The capper came when the front end hit the ground and the left wheel canted out thirty degrees. “Good luck, chief,” said the driver, and drove off whistling an out of tune rendition of “Turkey in the Straw.”
I heard steps echoing down the ramp from upstairs and gradually Cesar came into view. He was dressed in the garage uniform of navy blue pants and shirt, both of which were spotless and crisply pressed in spite of the hour. His shoes were shined to a high gloss and his jet black hair was combed back, accentuating the gray wings at his temples. Give him a corn cob pipe and a few inches and he could have been the MacArthur of garage mechanics. “Your parking space is downstairs, Señor,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. The thing is, I’m having a little trouble making it there.”
He grinned at me. “Did you run out of gas?
“I might have, but there seem to be contributing factors.”
He made a slow circuit around the car, touching dents here and there and finally stopping in front of the hood. He laid a pair of latex-gloved hands on one of the few uncumpled spots and pressed down. The car yielded only an inch or so, making a terrible grating noise as it moved. “That will be your tie rods or your axle or both.”
“Can you fix it?”
“I’ve seen the news stories about the cable car, Señor. What you did was very brave.”
I felt heat rise in my cheeks. Cesar and I rarely exchanged words-and most of those were taken up by the good-natured jokes he and the other mechanics made about my car. I wasn’t exactly comfortable incorporating hero worship into the relationship at this point. I made a show of straightening the radio antenna. It didn’t straighten worth beans. “You would have done the same,” I said finally.
“I don’t know. I think that is one of those things you can only know when it happens.” He peeled off his gloves and put them in his back pocket. “The car is totaled, Señor. There is no point in repairing it. Get a new one. I have a nice Mercedes I can give you a good price on.”
“Totaled just means it costs more to fix than the car is worth for resale. By that measure it was probably totaled before the crash. But as much as I’d like a Mercedes, this car has sentimental value to me. I want to repair it.”
“Even if I fixed the front end and all the body damage, it still has a forty-year-old drive train. I’ve seen the exhaust rolling out of this thing. Every time you came out of the garage, you nearly gassed us to death. I’d be surprised if half the cylinders have compression.”
“Then rebuild the engine-and the transmission if you have to.”
He shook his head. “That is silly. If you really want to drive around in a 1968 Galaxie 500, you should buy one that has already been restored. It will be much cheaper.”
“Are you saying you won’t do it even if I pay you the money?”
“No, I’m saying that it doesn’t make sense. Perhaps you are a little rattled from the-from the accident. Anyone would be.”
My hand closed around the Saint Apollonia medal I carried in my pocket and I squeezed. I strained to keep my voice level. “Look, this was my father’s car. It’s the only thing I have from him. I don’t want to lose it.”
“Oh. That is different. Why didn’t you say so?”
“I just did.”
He nodded like someone trying to be reasonable when the other party wasn’t. “I’ll run an estimate and call you tomorrow. But I have to close now.” He came up to where I was standing and reached over to touch my shoulder. “You know the girl, Araceli Rivero?”
My mouth went dry. “Yes?”
“She was a member of our church, Mission Dolores. There are many people from Central and South America in the congregation. They are holding a vigil for her this evening. I think you should come.”

Necrophobia

THE LAST TIME I ATTENDED A VIGIL OR WAKE was when my great aunt died when I was five. They put her coffin on a big table in the darkened living room of her gingerbread bungalow, lit candles, turned the mirrors to the wall, and lifted me up over the satin-quilted maw of the box and made me kiss her goodbye. Afterwards I locked myself in the bathroom and used a bar of Boraxo I found under the sink to eradicate the pink powdery taste of her. I quit scrubbing only after my lips were skinned and bloodied-and have suffered from an irrational fear of embalmed bodies ever since.
The vigil for Araceli Rivero wasn’t held in a gingerbread bungalow or even a church, but in the “visitation” room of Pietro Palermo & Co. Funeral Directors. I had gone back to my apartment to change into the only black suit I owned, and by the time I pulled open the heavy, iron-bound door to the room, it was approaching 8:00 p.m. The casket was at the front in a niche lit by a pair of art deco torche lamps and two candles in tall brass holders. A life-sized crucifix yawned out from the wall above an oak and green velvet kneeler situated in front.
Clumps of people sat on pews with heads bowed or stood together holding whispered conversations. There wasn’t a priest, nor was there anybody I could pick out as family. But Cesar I spotted immediately. He was bent over the kneeler, his fingers moving ponderously through the beads of a rosary, his slicked back hair glistening under the light.
An obvious funeral parlor employee stood by the door near a podium with a sign-in book. As I came up, he handed me a memorial card with a picture of Jesus blessing a young woman. “The family appreciates your attendance. Would you sign the mourner’s register, please?”
I looked down at the book. There were spaces for name, address and an unlabeled column that people had used to write things like, “God bless Araceli” and “There is hope in Christ’s resurrection and glory.” I felt like a fraud and intruder and wished for the hundredth time that I hadn’t let Cesar guilt me into going.
“I don’t know-” I started.
The funeral parlor guy arranged his face into a look of professional concern and held out a silver fountain pen. I sighed and took the fancy writing implement from his hand, scratching out my name and address in what I hoped would be an illegible jumble. I left the final column blank.
Pietro Palermo & Co’s man leaned over the book to inspect what I’d written, and frowning slightly, relieved me of the pen. “Thank you, sir. If you’re not familiar with the custom, may I suggest that you take a seat in the pews until you have the opportunity to go up to the departed.”
I nodded like I appreciated the advice and took a seat in the pew closest to the exit, resolving to slip out the door as soon as he was distracted. To avoid catching anyone’s eye in the meantime, I made a close inspection of the card he had given me. The side without Jesus had Araceli’s full name and a birthday of December 2nd, twenty-three years ago. Her “heavenly birth date”-that is, the day she was killed-was printed below it. At the bottom came a short prayer titled “Eternal Rest” that I recognized from my Catholic upbringing. It was given in three languages: Latin, Spanish and English.
I heard the door open again and I turned back to watch the funeral parlor employee give his spiel to a pair of young women who had to be classmates of Araceli’s at UCSF. The first one had barely taken hold of the pen before her lip started trembling and she sobbed out loud. As her companion reached over to hug her, I felt a tap on my arm.
“I’m glad that you came, Señor.” Cesar stood in the aisle beside me wearing a black suit that probably cost twice as much as mine, but somehow didn’t make him look any more dressy than his smart garage uniform.
“That makes one of us,” I said.
He shook his head. “No, the family and Araceli will appreciate it, too. “
“The family maybe-and maybe for the wrong reasons. But you’re making an assumption about dead people that I can’t share.”
“Please. Now is not the time to debate the existence of the afterlife. You must do the expected thing-if only to comfort the family. Go up and say goodbye to her, and on the off chance you are wrong about God, pray for her soul.”
“I don’t even see anyone from-“
“Please.”
His hand found its way around my wrist and tugged. I gave into the inevitable. I stood like a zombie and tottered down the aisle towards the niche. The memory of my great aunt sent my heartbeat past redline and my vision darkened and narrowed. My extremities tingled. Then I caught sight of Araceli over the edge of the polished mahogany and all the anxiety seemed to lift. It’s going too far to say she looked angelic, but for the first time I appreciated why someone would ever leave a casket open.
She lay in ivory satin in an ivory satin dress with a silver-beaded rosary clasped in her hands. Her apricot blond hair was arranged carefully on the pillow and her expression was serene and composed. She wore modest silver earrings and a plain silver bracelet. Her skin was a vibrant rose-petal pink, and there was no trace of wounds, bullets or madmen who hijack cable cars. But neither was there much of the flirtatious girl from the laundromat. She’d been transformed into a sort of virginal madonna.
I stood over her, fingering the fabric softener sheet she’d given me in my pocket. I had brought it on a whim with the idea that I might return it to her, but I realized now it would be wildly inappropriate. After an awkward interlude, I sank to my knees, put my elbows on the rail and bowed my head, but I was just marking time to make it look right. Whatever small connection I had with her seemed to be lost. I had been her avenger, but I didn’t really know her. And I was hardly the one to make a case for her soul if she-or any of us-had one.
My eyes were closed, but through the sound of rustling fabric and little fidgeting movements, I became aware of someone standing off to the left. I stayed on the kneeler for another long minute, then stood and stepped back-and because I figured it had to be family-made a clumsy attempt at crossing myself.
“Mr. Riordan?” came the expected request.
It was family all right, but not the sort I expected. A taller, lither version of Araceli stood waiting: more ballerina than underwear model, but with the same hair, green eyes and cheek bones. She wore a simple black dress and plain silver jewelry that seemed to match Araceli’s.
“I’m August Riordan,” I agreed in a too loud voice.
“Melina Rivero. Araceli was my sister.”
I took her extended hand and managed to get something across about how sorry I was. Then, feeling the need to account for my presence, I blurted, “I hope you don’t mind my attending. My friend Cesar is a member of your church, and since I was-since I was involved, he encouraged me to pay my respects.”
“Did you know Araceli, Mr. Riordan?”
“I didn’t. We had just met that day. At the laundromat.”
“That is what the newspaper said, but we wondered if it could be true. We are very grateful for what you did.”
I looked down at my feet, then forced myself to meet her gaze again. “I’m afraid what I did was more of a postscript. It doesn’t change…” I gestured over to the niche.
“No, it does not change that.” Her eyes strayed to the coffin and she seemed to go away for a moment. Then she twitched her head sharply and brought her arms up to hug herself. “My father and brother are in the director’s office. When they heard you were here, they asked that I bring you back to meet them. They want to thank you and they have a question.”
“A question?”
“I am sorry. English is a second language. A better way to express it is they have a job. A job they wish to offer you.”

Cementerio de la Recoleta

THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR’S OFFICE WAS BIG, cold and Gothic-looking, and didn’t exactly convey a feeling of sympathy or desire to help you through troubled times. The ceiling was vaulted with massive oak beams running beneath it, and light came from a single lancet window and a couple of heavy plaster wall sconces that you could have fried turkeys in. Melina Rivero’s heels clicked across the stone floor as she led me to the corner of the room where a bald man with a Jimmy Durante nose and large, square-rimmed glasses waited behind a carved desk. To his left was a younger version of the same model-including the eggplant-shaped shnoz-but with more iron-gray hair remaining on top of his head. Given Melina and Araceli’s appearance, I decided Mrs. Rivero had to be a real looker because dad was watering down the handsome genes something fierce.
Both men stood, barrel-chested and stolid, and Melina introduced us. Senior was named Reynaldo and compensated for his plain looks with a grip like a crimping tool. Junior was named Orlando and reached across with his left to give me a backhanded shake. As he sat down, I noticed his right arm hung limp at his side.
There was only one other chair by the desk and Rivero senior made it clear that it would just be us boys talking when he said, “Melina, I expect you are needed in the chapel.”
She said, “Yes, father,” and pausing only to give my bicep a reassuring squeeze, turned and walked out.
Rivero didn’t waste any time. “Tell me how you knew Araceli,” he said after he nodded me into the remaining chair. His speech was clipped and precise, and like everyone else I’d met in the family, carried a trace of that not quite familiar Latin accent.
“Melina asked about that, too. We didn’t know each other. We had just met at the laundromat.”
“I don’t understand that. She had no need to wash her clothes in a public laundry, especially her intimate clothing. It seems to me that could only invite unwanted attention.”
I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about Araceli’s big stack of panties and our exchange about souvenirs. I licked my lips and hoped I didn’t look like a complete pervert. “I wouldn’t know about that.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“Why did I do what?”
“Why did you risk your life to stop the gunman?”
I shifted in my chair. I’d been off-balance and uncomfortable since I walked in the funeral parlor, playing a part that I didn’t believe, but not wanting to offend or show disrespect. I was done with all that now. “I did it for the reward,” I said snidely.

Free Kindle Nation Shorts — March 7, 2011: An Excerpt from “Invisible Path,” a Tempe Crabtree Mystery by Marilyn Meredith

Jesus Running Bear is the only suspect in the murder of a popular Native American near the recovery center at the far end of the Bear Creek Reservation. While investigating, Deputy Tempe Crabtree learns the victim wasn’t quite what he seemed, and crosses paths with a militant para-military group who pique her curiosity and end up being a threat.  
  
By Stephen Windwalker
Editor, Kindle Nation Daily
©Kindle Nation Daily 2011
 

Have I told you lately that I have the best job in the world for a man who loves to read?

I won’t put too fine a point on it, but for me, the only thing better than a job where I get to spend over half of my working hours reading is one where I get to share my greatest discoveries with other folks who love to read.

And here we go again, with a terrific “police procedural” series that is — as you’ll see in Marilyn Meredith’s generous 8000-word excerpt herewith — so, so much more, thanks to her ability to infuse the narrative with Native American legends and traditions.

Somehow, until now, Marilyn Meredith has managed to escape my attention while creating these exquisitely imagined 5-star “Tempe Crabtree mysteries.” But no longer will she fly below the radar if I have anything to do with it.

Here’s the set-up from Amazon reviewer Cheryl Malandrinos:
Deputy Tempe Crabtree is back in this superb addition to Marilyn Meredith’s award-winning series that blends Native American mysticism, the beauty of the Sierra foothills, and a mystery to solve.
Tempe’s son, Blair, returns home to celebrate Christmas, bringing along his college roommate. The boys are curious about some pseudo soldiers they’ve seen driving through town and ask Tempe what she knows, which isn’t much.
When a young Indian is found dead near the recovery center on the reservation, Tempe is once again called in to investigate. Jesus Running Bear, a newcomer to the reservation who has been getting help with his addictions, is the prime suspect. But Tempe isn’t so sure he’s guilty. A secret, a quest to find an Indian legend, and a visit to the para-military compound put Jesus and Tempe in danger.
Can Tempe solve the mystery and save both their lives?
Invisible Path is phenomenal! The series improves as time goes on. The last book, Dispel the Mist, included the Native American legend of the Hairy Man. He also helps to move the plot in this new installment along. This, and Tempe’s continued confusing dreams, which Nick Two John (the innkeeper and Tempe’s friend) doesn’t really help Tempe decipher, give this mystery series a unique element.
What the author has always done well in both her series is showcase how a law enforcement career can impact family life. While for Tempe that usually means missing dinners or working on her day off, this makes her a character that readers can relate to.
I eagerly await the next Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery novel.
by Marilyn Meredith
Kindle Edition ~ Release Date: 2010-10-01

List Price: $4.99

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excerptFree Kindle Nation Shorts – March 7, 2011
An Excerpt from
Invisible Path
“A Tempe Crabtree Mystery”
 by Marilyn Meredith
Copyright © 2011 by Marilyn Meredith and published here with her permission
Chapter 4
Tempe and Hutch had been grocery shopping and arrived home to find a black Ford Escort they didn’t recognize parked in front of Blair’s Honda. “Looks like Blair’s friend is here,” Tempe said.
Entering the cottage, both of them carrying bulging paper bags in their arms; they were greeted by Blair and a handsome black man around the same age. His dark hair close-cropped, he was about three inches taller than Blair’s six feet. His smile was bright, contrasting with his dark skin. He wore a T-shirt proclaiming loyalty to the college both young men attended, and crisply ironed Chinos.
Both jumped up from the table and took the sacks and put the groceries on the counter top.
“Mom, Dad, this is my roommate, Chad Underwood.”
Chad put his hand out to Tempe first. “Ma’am. Pleased to meet you.” He shook Hutch’s hand next. “Sir. I want to thank you both for inviting me to your home.”
“You are certainly welcome,” Hutch said. “Please, sit down.”
After the amenities were over and Hutch and Tempe had stored the groceries in the cupboards and refrigerator, Tempe suggested they sit in the living room where it was more comfortable. Though small like the rest of the house, the room had a worn but plump overstuffed couch and two big armchairs, all facing the stone fireplace. A braided rug, left from another era, nearly covered the plank floor.
When they’d chosen places to sit, Blair warned they would only be there for a short while since he planned on taking Chad up to the fire station and introducing him. “Remember, Chad is majoring in fire science like I am. He’s never seen a small volunteer fire station.”
Chad chuckled. “No insult intended, but I’ve never been to a town as small as this one either.”
“Before our son whisks you away, tell us about yourself,” Tempe urged.
“There’s not much to tell, Ma’am. I’m an orphan. I don’t know if Blair mentioned it, but my parents came to California from Uganda. They had their own business and were trying to become citizens. I was born here. It was very important to them that I be an American and we only spoke English in our home. When I was five and starting school, they took me to kindergarten and on their way home, a speeder drove through a red light in a SUV and ran into my parents’ car when it was in the intersection. They both died.”
“I’m so sorry,” Hutch said.
Tempe’s hand went to her heart. “How horrible. What happened to you?”
“Well, Ma’am, at first, I didn’t really understand. A social worker came and got me and took me to my first foster home. I guess they tried to find other relatives of mine, but there weren’t any except maybe in Uganda, but they couldn’t be located. Actually, I was blessed.” He flashed another huge smile. “My second foster home was an African American family and it wasn’t long before I felt comfortable there. My foster dad is a minister….”
Blair interrupted. “See? I told you Chad and I had lots in common.” He grinned at Hutch.
Chad continued, “and my Mom is a typical minister’s wife.”
“Which my Mom isn’t.” This time Blair beamed at Tempe. He patted her hand.
Chad continued. “Ordinarily, I’d be spending Christmas with them. They’re not taking in foster kids anymore. Everyone they’ve cared for have grown up and started their own lives. Lots of us still go home for the holidays, but this year my folks are on a mission trip to, of all places, Uganda. They’ve promised to see if they can find out anything about any relatives I might still have there.”
“How exciting,” Hutch said. “The only mission field I’ve ever been called to is right here in Bear Creek.”
“Wouldn’t that be something if they did find some of your relatives?” Tempe asked.
Chad nodded. “Yes, Ma’am. But I’m really happy with the folks I’ve got. They’ve been wonderful to me.”
“That’s a blessing,” Hutch said. “Will you two be back for dinner?”
“What are you cooking?” Blair stood.
“Barbecuing steaks.”
Chad grinned and deep dimples appeared in both cheeks. “You weren’t kidding about being well fed.”
Blair stood. “Hutch is a great cook. Don’t worry, we’ll definitely be here. What time?”
“Your Mom has to work, so how about around seven? Maybe she can take a break about then. What do you think, Tempe?”
“I’ll try, since it’s Wednesday it ought to be on the calm side, but who can tell?” Tempe said. “If I find out I can’t make it, I’ll call so you can eat without me.”
Standing too, Chad said, “We’ll make a point of being back on time, Sir.” Once again he shook Tempe’s hand and then Hutch’s.
After the Blair and his friend left, Tempe caressed Hutch’s cheek. “I better get my uniform on. It’s nearly time for me to go on duty.”
“I’ll pray for a quiet night.” Hutch leaned closer to Tempe and kissed her.
* * *
Despite it being Wednesday, Tempe knew as soon as her radio blared to life, and her cell phone rang at the same time, she wouldn’t make it home for dinner.
The dispatcher informed her a body had been discovered on the Bear Creek Indian Reservation and she was directed to go there as quickly as possible to help Cruz Murphy, the reservation’s Public Safety Chief, preserve the scene. The location was reported to be near the Bear Creek Recovery Center, which was located about a quarter mile past the Painted Rock site that sheltered ancient pictographs. The recovery center was at the end of the main road that passed through the reservation.
The cell phone call was from Detective Morrison with the same message, except delivered in his usual curt manner. Once she told him she was already on her way to the crime scene, he  added, “Find out what you can from the Indians and let me know. I’ll be out there as soon as I can.”
Though the relationship between Tempe and the detective had improved somewhat over the last year, he still had the mistaken notion that because she had Native American blood in her veins, any Indian would respond to her immediately and tell her everything she wanted to know.
Because it was December, it was already dark as Tempe sped along the narrow curving road to her destination. She’d taken the road often enough in the daytime to know that ranches and homes were tucked in here and there-though at this time of night, she caught only glimpses of lighted windows as she raced by. She had her emergency lights turned on, along with her Siren, just to warn of her approach.
Finally she reached the carved and painted wooden sign that announced she was entering the Bear Creek Indian Reservation. Tempe knew that a reservation was first created at the eastern end of Dennison in 1857 for scattered bands of Indians, but as the town grew, it became inconvenient for many of the local citizens to have so many Indians as neighbors. In 1873, by presidential order, a new location for the reservation was established on 54,000 acres, much of it mountainous.
Narrow and winding, the road continued with dwellings on either side, scattered in the valleys and across the hillsides. She passed the turn-off to Bear Mountain Casino but slowed down as she drove through the part of the rez that contained the public safety building and the medical center. Two churches perched on a hillside off to the left. Across the way was the child-development center and pre-school and the building that housed the tribal council. Other community services and the new fire station were located on other side streets. Once past the hub of the rez, Tempe drove by more homes spread farther and farther apart and deeper into reservation land.
When she passed the place where the old lumber mill once operated and was now used for rodeos and Pow Wows, she knew she was getting close. The asphalt ended and she continued driving. On her right were the huge boulders that created the cave that protected pictographs of the legendary Hairy Man and his family, as well as other colorful Indian symbols.
The Hairy Man was a Yokut legend considered sacred to the tribe. She knew he was also believed to be powerful medicine. When Tempe was a little girl, her grandmother told her stories about the legend. Over the years, many Indians reported sightings of the Hairy Man.
Tempe had experienced her own encounter with the Hairy Man. The startling event wasn’t something she’d shared with anyone except Hutch and Chief Murphy. During the investigation of the murder of a county supervisor a few months earlier, she’d learned more about the Hairy Man. When she’d been trapped by the supervisor’s killer, the legend had saved her life.
As time passed, the memory of the event became less and less real-sometimes she wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing.
Ahead, red, blue and white lights flashed from emergency vehicles: the Bear Creek Public Safety truck that Chief Murphy drove, an ambulance, and a fire truck. Numerous people milled about in the shadows.
She parked behind the other vehicles. She didn’t see the vans belonging to either the coroner or the crime scene investigator. Before Tempe even had her door open, Chief Murphy appeared out of the shadows, striding toward her. Cruz Murphy’s mother was Yanduchi like Tempe, but his father was Irish-hence the unusual surname. His skin, hair and eyes were dark, but his features displayed more of his Irish heritage. Muscular, he filled out his tan uniform.
She slid out of the truck, and hurried toward him. “Chief Murphy, good to see you. What’s going on?”
“Cruz, please. I think we know each other well enough by now to be on a first name basis.”
“Cruz it is.”
“I’m glad you’re here, Tempe. The victim is from the reservation. The crime scene has been seriously contaminated. One of the residents of the recovery center discovered the body. Once he set off the alarm, the staff and other clients were all over the place. Soon as I got here, I shooed everyone away and cordoned off the area with tape. Too late, I’m afraid.”
“Has the crime scene investigator been called?”
Murphy nodded. “And the coroner. They should arrive fairly soon.”
Since they had to come all the way from Visalia, it would be awhile. “Have you identified the victim?” Tempe followed Murphy toward the crowd of spectators.
“A young Indian named Danny Tofoya.”
His name sounded vaguely familiar. “You say he lived here on the rez?”
“Yes, he and his extended family are long time residents.”
“Any suspects?”
“There are plenty of rumors. People are saying a young man named Jesus Running Bear probably did it.”
“Who is he?”
“Someone who recently graduated from the recovery program. Instead of going home, he decided to hang around. Rented a room here on the rez from the parents of another graduate, Russell Sanger.”
Tempe knew Indians with drug or alcohol problems from all over the state were either court-ordered into the recovery program or voluntarily checked themselves in. The program had a reputation for a high success rate in changing men’s lives. As she’d been told by one of the elders, “White people have their 12 Step Programs and Alcoholics Anonymous, Indians use their own ceremonies and sweats to heal themselves. Liquor is a curse that kills more Indians than any of the white man’s diseases or bullets.”
“What’s the motive? What are they saying is the reason Running Bear killed Tofoya?” she asked.
“From what I can gather, Running Bear was sweet on Tofoya’s cousin. A girl named Jolie Tofoya. There’s plenty of folks around who’ll tell you about it.”
Off to the right and away from the crowd, with inside lights blazing, was the long, low building housing the Bear Creek Recovery Center. As they approached the crowd made up of mostly Native American men of various ages-residents of the recovery center, Tempe guessed-the voices grew louder and angrier.
“Shoulda gone back where he came from.”
“Jesus-wrong name for a murderer.”
“Tofoya was right when he said Running Bear was a snake.”
“Can’t imagine what Jolie sees in that killer.”
“Bet the Singers are sorry they took him in.”
In a loud voice, Cruz commanded, “Let the deputy through.”
The noise subsided as the onlookers turned to stare at Tempe. They moved aside enough to create a narrow path. She made her way through until she came out to the clearing where the sweat lodge was located. The crime scene tape went around the canvas-covered sweat lodge and beyond, but she couldn’t see the body.
She turned and peered at Cruz Murphy.
He lifted the yellow tape and ducked under it, holding it up for her. “Follow me. The body’s back here.”
After passing the sweat lodge, she spotted a dark mound that resembled a pile of discarded rags tucked between two large fir trees. Two Native Americans in their turnout gear, black jackets and pants, with Bear Creek Fire Dept. stenciled in yellow on the back, stood guard.
Drawing nearer, Tempe noted the many footprints in the dirt. As Cruz had warned, this was clearly a contaminated crime scene. It wouldn’t matter if she took a closer look.
Stepping within two feet, she knelt down, turned on her flashlight and shone it over the corpse. He was lying on his back, with a dark hole in his chest. Oddly, there was no blood anywhere around him, but there was blood on his neck and face, and even some on his arms and hands.
“He wasn’t killed here,” Tempe said. “He was transported after he was shot. At least that’s my guess.”
“Mine too. No rigor mortis-no real odor. This happened within the last couple of hours.”
“Once Dr. Crandall gets here, she’ll be able to tell us more. Did anyone hear the shots?”
“Folks have had plenty to say, but nothing about hearing gun fire.”
“Who was the first person to find the body?” Tempe glanced around at the gathering of men. Not a single female could be seen.
“Jared Davis.” Cruz pointed to a young man, obviously Native American like everyone else who had gathered. He shuffled his feet, kicking up puffs of dirt.
Tempe went over to Davis. “Hi, I’m Deputy Crabtree. How did you happen to find the body?”
Davis was short and skinny, probably in his late twenties or early thirties, but drug or alcohol abuse had aged him prematurely. His skin was spotty. Deep lines accented his mouth and forehead. His nearly black hair was pulled back into a pony tail. His eyes darted about. “All I was doing was walking around. I been in the program about three weeks. Sometimes these guys are more than I can handle and I have to get away by myself. I was just walking around thinking and I almost stumbled over that dead guy. I couldn’t believe my eyes and started hollering for help.”
“Did you touch him?” Tempe asked.
Shaking his head vigorously, Davis said, “No way. I could tell he was dead by looking at him. His eyes were open, but his spirit was gone.”
“Do you know the victim?”
“Not really. I’ve seen him around is all. They say he lives, lived, on the rez. My home is in Dennison with my wife and kids. That’s where I’ll go back once I get out of this place.”
“Did you hear or see anything unusual before you found the body?” Tempe asked.
Again he shook his head. “No. My head was filled with other things. Missing my family. Wondering how much longer it would be before I can get out of here.”
“So that means you’ve still got some time left and will be here if I or someone else needs to talk to you again, right?”
“I ain’t going nowhere ’til I graduate.” He stepped away from her, blending into the shadows.
The sound of an approaching vehicle caught Tempe’s attention. She watched the headlights coming over the hill, hoping it was Dr. Crandall. Instead, she was surprised to see it was a Honda, but not so surprised when it parked beside her truck and the doors flung open. Blair popped out of the driver’s side and his friend, Chad from the passenger side.
Cruz Murphy frowned. “You know them?”
“Sure do, that’s my son and his friend from college.” She strode toward them. “Don’t tell me you heard the call while you were at the fire station.”
Blair grinned. “Nope, actually we were eating a great steak dinner when my scanner went off. I told Hutch what happened and he said that explained why you hadn’t come home. We finished eating and when I told him we wanted to see what was going on, he gave us his blessing.”
“He probably wanted you to check up on me,” Tempe said.
“I have a hunch he wanted to make sure you were safe, Ma’am,” Chad said.
She smiled. Not only was Blair’s roommate polite, he was also diplomatic. “As long as you’re here, son, maybe you can help. The victim’s name is Danny Tofoya. Have you heard of him?”
Blair nodded. “He was a couple of years ahead of me in school. Popular guy. Football player. Known for his bad temper. Got in a lot of fights. Think he was suspended once. He was a good enough football player that he got counseling instead of being expelled. Kids grumbled about that a bit-especially the white kids. Some thought he got special treatment because he was a Native American. I doubt if that was so, too often the Indians weren’t treated as well as the Mexican or white kids.”
“What can we do to help, Ma’am?” Chad asked.
“Since no one knows you, why don’t you wander around and listen to what people are saying.” Tempe turned to her son, “Blair, see if you can find people you do know and ask what they saw, especially right after the body was discovered.”
The young men began to mingle. The sound of more vehicles coming up the hill caught Tempe’s attention. This time it was two vans with the county’s logo. A trim blonde woman stepped out of a Ford minivan, Dr. Andrea Crandall, the crime scene investigator who also served as medical examiner. A portly man with a bald head, wriggled out of the gray coroner’s van, along with a younger male helper. Things would begin moving now.
Dr. Crandall stepped into the small area, eerily illuminated by the emergency lights on the county vehicles flashing red, and blue. Those and the outside flood lamps on the recovery center were all that lit the scene. “Who’s in charge here?” she called out. Her fair hair was cut short and she wore a navy blue no-nonsense pants suit and carried a large case by the handle.
“I am.” Cruz stepped up to her, hand extended. “Cruz Murphy, Public Safety Chief for the reservation.”
She shook his hand and peered around. “I don’t suppose the crime scene has been preserved.” Recognition showed in her eyes when she spotted Tempe. She grinned. “Deputy Crabtree, how nice to see you again.”
Despite Dr. Crandall’s fair complexion and light hair, the crime scene investigator also had Indian blood. She and Tempe had shared their experiences of being women in male dominated professions. Dr. Crandall had confessed to keeping her ethnic background quiet so she didn’t have to endure more jokes or prejudice.
“Same here. Can I help you with your case?” Tempe asked, but Cruz reached for it before she could take it.
“Allow me,” he said. The doctor released it to him. “As to your question about the crime scene, when I got here people were milling all around the victim. I don’t think you’ll find much of value except what you can get from the body itself.”
“The sooner I get started the better.” Dr. Crandall followed Cruz, with Tempe bringing up the rear. The crowd parted once again, allowing them through.
When they were about five feet from the corpse, Dr. Crandall said, “Stop here. Deputy, would you please play your flashlight beam in a circle around the body?”
Tempe took her flashlight from her utility belt and did as directed. Like she’d noted before, the dirt around the body was marred with many footprints.
Dr. Crandall sighed. “Okay.” She moved closer. “Chief Murphy, if you’ll put my case right there, please. And Deputy, hold the light steady. When I want you to move it, I’ll ask.” She opened the case, lifted out a large battery powered light and set it up and turned it on.
At first the doctor peered at the victim, moving around him. Bending down at times, not touching anything, she finally asked, “Deputy, would you please hand me my camera.”
Once the doctor had the camera, she took photos of the victim from every angle, some from a distance, some up close. She put the camera back and took out a notebook and wrote quickly for several minutes. She also drew some simple sketches of the body. Again, reaching in her case, she drew out a pair of latex gloves and put them on. She inserted what resembled a thermometer into the corpse’s side. Pulled it out, stared for a moment, and wrote more notes.
She stood with one hand on her hip. “He’s probably been dead only a couple of hours. He was shot in the chest, but it didn’t happen here. If you’ll note the blood on his face, arms and hands, I suspect he was transported with his head hanging down. What I want you two to do is walk a grid and see if you can find tire tracks or anything that might give us a hint about how he got here.”
Tempe and Cruz followed her instructions, each of them with their own flashlight. Tempe stared at the ground as she walked back and forth, but there was nothing significant there except the multitude of shoe prints in the dirt. Finally the cleared ground gave way to matted weeds except for the narrow road that disappeared into the mountains. Nothing appeared out of place or unusual.
Cruz had as little success as she. They both returned

An Excerpt from 13 Days: The Pythagoras Conspiracy, a Novel by LA Starks – Free Kindle Nation Shorts — March 6, 2011

Fair Warning: You May Not Want to Start Reading Today’s Free Excerpt if You Have Other Things to Do, Something Cooking on the Stove, or Anything Else Going On That You Can’t Afford to Ignore….
As Top 500 Amazon Reviewer Detra Fitch put it:

“This tale will keep readers engrossed to the point that they forget all else going on around them.
Truly fantastic!”

By Stephen Windwalker
Editor, Kindle Nation Daily
©Kindle Nation Daily 2011
It’s Sunday, and there’s a fair chance that, as a citizen of Kindle Nation in good standing, you’ve set aside some time to read.
What works for you?
A murder mystery?
A frightening conspiracy thriller?
A new “female sleuth” protagonist in the form of a heroine with advanced degrees who has risen to the highest rungs on Big Oil’s corporate ladder but now must fight threats against her own life, disloyal employees, catastrophic hurricanes, international espionage, and a French saboteur?
A gripping, global-stakes mix of suspense and thrills ripped from today’s headlines, written with so much intelligence and experience that you’ll be moved to think in new ways about turmoil in the Arab world, skyrocketing gas prices, and the relentless series of catastrophes that have challenged New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico the past few years.
How about all of the above?
All you need to do is click here to begin reading today’s generous 9,000-word Free Kindle Nation Shorts excerpt to discover that you can have it all in one smart page-turner, because L.A. Starks’ 13 Days: The Pythagoras Conspiracy has it all.
Here’s the set-up:
Energy executive Lynn Dayton thinks her challenge is fixing the troubled Houston refinery her company just bought. But she discovers she must save it, and hundreds of people in nearby Ship Channel plants, from injuries and deaths directed by a French saboteur. Simultaneously, she fights off threats to her own life. As Lynn deals with chemical leaks, disloyal employees, a new season of hurricanes, and mounting casualties, corrupted idealist Robert Guillard plans to manipulate her through her vulnerable sister. But Robert underestimates his prey…
13 Days:
by L.A. Starks
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
List Price: $4.99
Click here to download 13 Days – The Pythagoras Conspiracy (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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What Reviewers Say
“13 Days has an excellent plot….L.A. Starks has contributed a fine murder mystery to the genre.”
Alan Paul Curtis, Who-dunnit.com
“A knock-down conspiracy exposing the darkest secrets of the oil industry. Starks has made an impressive debut….”
— Michael Lucker, Screenwriter, Vampire In Brooklyn, Mulan II
“We never seem to learn. No matter the price of gasoline we just keep on truckin’. L. A. Stark was inspired by our gluttony to pen 13 Days. 13 Days takes readers on a fast paced ride into the world of petroleum. I would describe this book as espionage, thriller, suspense and entertaining. The quality of the plot and character make it difficult to believe this is a debut novel. The characterization is exquisite. The plot is exciting and informative.”
–Readers Favorite, Vine Voice

Notes for Understanding

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a colorless, potentially deadly gas routinely produced in oil refineries when sulfur is removed from crude oil, gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, and heating oil. H2S never leaves the refinery. It is converted to a safer, more useful, solid form-elemental sulfur.
The OSHA safe limit for H2S is a maximum of 10 parts per million (ppm) over eight hours. Low concentrations of 100-200 ppm irritate the eyes and upper respiratory tract. A half-hour exposure to 500 ppm results in headache, dizziness, staggering, and other symptoms, sometimes followed by bronchitis or pneumonia. Higher concentrations paralyze respiration. Exposure to 800-1000 ppm may be fatal in half an hour. Even higher concentrations can be fatal instantly.

Pythagoras was a Greek mathematician and philosopher who lived from 582-496 BCE. He is best known for the Pythagorean Theorem, which states that the sum of the squares of the short sides of a right triangle equals the square of the longest side, the hypotenuse.
Pythagoreans-Pythagoras and his students-discovered the relationship between musical notes could be expressed in numerical ratios of whole numbers. Indeed, Pythagoras and his students believed everything was related to mathematics. They were the first to describe something we now take for granted-the abstraction of numbers. For example, two stones plus two stones equal four stones is abstracted and generalized to 2+2=4. Pythagoreans believed whole numbers and their ratios could account for everything in nature, and that these geometrical relationships were sacred. One Pythagorean belief which resonates today is equality of the sexes.
The group of students that gathered around Pythagoras was similar to a cult in its communal living and its insistence on secrecy. A student named Hippasus challenged Pythagoras by postulating the existence of irrational numbers, such as the square root of two. When, in the eyes of the Pythagoreans he worsened the crime by publicizing the disagreement, he was killed.

excerptFree Kindle Nation Shorts – March 6, 2011
An Excerpt from
13 Days:
The Pythagoras Conspiracy
A Novel by LA Starks
Copyright © 2011 by LA Starks and published here with her permission
This book is dedicated to my family, to the memory of Karen Phillips, and to all who care for New Orleans.

1.
Thursday morning, Houston, Texas
Summer
“What’s wrong with the flare?” Lynn Dayton, executive vice president for TriCoast Energy’s US oil refining operations, pointed to one of the giant, sentry-like structures visible through the refinery’s conference room window. The yellow flame should have been soaring at least fifteen feet above its 120-foot stack. The three executives meeting with Lynn turned to look a quarter mile away at the feeble smear of orange and smoke.
Lynn’s job had traditionally been held by men, a tradition hard to change. Khakis she’d thrown on at four thirty this morning for the flight to Houston hinted at her long runner’s legs. “Is a unit down?”
“I’ll check.” Reese Spencer’s short, white hair seemed to bristle to attention. He hurried out of the conference room with his cell phone. She’d hired Reese, ex-navy pilot and long-time friend, to run this refinery she had convinced TriCoast’s board to buy just before it hit bankruptcy court. She’d promised the board she would make it profitable by refitting the refinery to produce more gasoline at lower cost.
Four weeks left. A blink of an eye compared to the time required to find the perfect piping changes that would increase efficiency, make the calculations, bid it out, get the welders on site to install it, and restart the unit, hoping the whole time the fix worked and you didn’t have a fire on start-up. A nanosecond when it took weeks to find additional crude-oil supply, unload tankers, run the crude, pipeline the resulting gasoline to wholesalers, and get paid. And you’re the only one in this room who cares if you don’t meet the deadline because you’re the only one who’ll be toast.
This too-small flare meant yet another setback.
A group of the refinery’s executives, including the two resentful people in front of her, had also tried to purchase the refinery in a management buyout but hadn’t been able to raise the cash.
A frown pulled at Dwayne Thomas’s tobacco-stained lips. Lynn glanced at him and the woman sitting next to him, angled back in metal-frame chairs.
She wondered if she could get all four of the VPs to pull together before she and they lost their jobs or worse, were reassigned to suffocate in Special Projects. “We want to answer questions about the merger of Centennial with TriCoast. Where are the others?”
Dwayne hacked a smoker’s cough and clamped his ham-sized hands together. “Riley Stevens told me he had a morning meeting.”
Riley’s probably at a banker’s breakfast. If he valued his job he’d be here. Lynn had met the Centennial CFO only twice. But in the last few weeks she had heard rumors about his attitude toward women.
Jean-Marie Taylor, a six-foot-tall woman who was VP in charge of safety and pronounced her name “John-Marie,” nudged Dwayne and rolled her eyes. “And Jay’s on a golf course somewhere.”
They’re accounted for so your worry is irrational. Hurricane season was starting. Luckily, only a few TriCoast employees had been missing after Katrina. But it took weeks to find their bodies.
Dwayne kept staring out the window. Lynn followed the gaze of the operations VP. An easy-to-read beacon of the refinery’s health, the flame atop the ten-story, needle-like structure telegraphed in a glance whether operations were normal. The same flame was still too short, too skinny. Dwayne turned. “Lynn, when you combine your existing Ship Channel refinery with ours, how many of us will you fire?”
What will you say this time to reassure him? “We need everyone. Now more than ever.” Except one.
“I don’t mean now. I mean . . .”
“Five operators down!” They heard Reese’s yell just before the wail of hydrogen sulfide alarms echoed off every tower, exchanger, and furnace.
The three of them jumped and rushed to the window, as if they could spot the source of the poisonous gas. But they knew hydrogen sulfide had no color.
“Where?” Lynn strained to hear over the high whine of the alarms.
Reese sprinted in from the hallway. “Adric thinks the leak is at a pretreater.” That’s why the flame on the flare is so short and skinny. The control center supervisor, Adric Washington, had likely turned off oil flowing into the pretreater to isolate it. By stopping the oil he was stopping the production of deadly gas.
“How many souls on board?” Reese asked quietly.
Souls on board. What a pilot says when the plane’s going down.
“A hundred and twenty of our own. Thirty-five contractors.” Dwayne wrapped big hands around the rim of his hard hat. “We gotta go see.”
Jean-Marie blocked the exit, hands on hips. “Stay here and don’t panic.”
“You can’t stop us,” Reese said.
“Yes, I can.” And she could. The safety officer pulled up to her six-foot-plus height. “The operators don’t need you big cheese in the way.”
After she strode away toward the refinery gate her command kept the room silent and motionless for only a moment.
“Now look at it!” Lynn ground her teeth in frustration as she put her hands on the conference room window and wrenched sideways for the best viewing angle. Pressurized liquid spilled out of a smaller flare and ignited as it hit oxygen and heat. Bright orange fireballs splattered the ground. She felt the glass vibrate against her fingers. We have to help those who might be hurt!
“I can’t let my men drop like flies!” Dwayne shouted, echoing her thoughts. “I don’t need Jean-Marie’s permission to go into my own refinery. Reese, you?”
Exclusion happens. Lynn interrupted, “Adric thinks the release is near the catalytic crackers. We’ll detour around them. Let’s find our folks.”
“You’re too pricey a chief to take a chance out there,” Dwayne said.
“Taking chances ‘out there,’ as you call it, is one reason I am the chief. We’ll go together. Reese has a truck.”
She grabbed a hard hat and safety glasses from a peg board in the bright white hallway. She and Dwayne raced outside to an old, red refinery truck with Reese and crammed themselves into it.
The truck rattled as the former navy airman ground gears. A guard waved them past razor wire fence and through the gate separating Centennial’s office building from its several acres of giant, spiky refining hardware.
Lynn heard the normal thunder of gas and liquids rushing through masses of pipes all around. Hot, sticky air swept in until they rolled up the truck’s open windows.
The processing towers were clumped in one area. Huge vessels two to five stories tall, each with manhole-sized inlets and outlets, were connected by bundles of either battleship gray or shiny insulated pipe. Pipelines of various diameters formed trellises over the roads. A complex network of more piping, heat exchangers, chillers, compressors, and pumps filled between the towers like metallic kudzu.
Everything had a number. Rushing through the C-200 area, they all jumped as a siren blast ricocheted off every exposed metal pipe, drum, and vessel in the refinery.
“Pull over!” Dwayne shouted. “That’s the H2S alarm again. We could be in the middle of another release!”
“We’ll be safer at the control center,” Reese said. He gunned the engine.
Staring over the black asphalt between the silver pipes, Lynn saw five mounds she at first thought were sacks of blue jumpsuits. “No! Stop! Our people are over there!” Oh Lord, none of them is moving.
Reese braked so hard his passengers braced themselves against the dashboard. Dwayne reached across Lynn to open the door but Reese yelled, “Don’t get out! You need respirators.” He gunned the truck again and they screeched up to a bright yellow kiosk.
“Hot zone!” Lynn shouted when they jumped from the truck and grabbed their equipment. Rotten-egg odor filled her nostrils. It’ll be even deadlier when you can’t smell it once your nerves are paralyzed.
“Drive to the control center,” Lynn told Reese. “Tell Adric to clear a space near the lockers. We’ll drag them in. We can’t wait for body boards.” She flipped on her oxygen mask making voice communication no longer possible.
Dwayne put a finger between the mask and Lynn’s face to check that her respirator was sealed tightly. She did the same for him. His practiced care with this simple safety gesture touched her.
They ran toward the bodies.
Two limp forms lay motionless next to an orange flag at the huge metal drum known as the catalytic cracking pretreater. Another operator was draped over the big bypass valve wheel. Two more lay twenty feet farther. Hydrogen sulfide for sure.
Thousands of butterflies wanted out of her stomach. Lynn told herself to stay calm. Slow down. Don’t screw up. Everyone’s depending on you.
She saw the first person. His shirt was pulled up over his mouth and his eyes were open.
Maybe they’re just unconscious. Maybe the concentration’s not high enough to kill them. Have to get them out and start CPR. Lynn pointed to a gap in the pipe near the valve and dragged her finger across her throat. The source.
Dwayne nodded and pointed toward the bodies farthest from the gap, the ones most likely to survive.
He knelt next to a man, Lynn behind a woman lying face up. They hoisted the operators under their armpits and dragged them toward the control center. Steel reinforcing in the toes of the woman’s boots caused her feet to splay out and hit the ground. The boot heels scraped mercilessly on the cement pad and caught in cracks as Lynn dragged her. The woman’s hard hat banged into Lynn’s chest with each step. She tried to forget that the most she’d lifted in a weight room was forty pounds. She tried not to think the words “dead weight.”
Her mask began to slip on her sweaty face. Surely Dwayne didn’t loosen the seal when he checked it. She smelled sour gas but didn’t dare lay the woman down to tighten the seal. If only she could make it to the control center.
She spared Dwayne a glance. Intent on moving another victim, he grunted, his face revealing only the strain.
They were still fifty yards from the cement-block control center when Jean-Marie, Adric, and a man Lynn didn’t recognize ran past. Also bulked up with respirators, they were looking for victims, too. Lynn nodded toward the pretreater valve.
The harder she panted, the more the sulfurous smell seeped into her nose. Twenty yards to go.
Reese held open the door of the control building that led to the lockers. She looked over her shoulder to make sure Jean-Marie and the others found the remaining operators. Can’t leave anyone behind.
Lynn pulled the woman in, laid her down on the tiled floor, and cradled her head as it rolled to one side. She ripped off the mask she’d put on only minutes before, pressing her fingers to the woman’s smooth, brown throat, then to her wrist. Where’s her pulse? God, help me find it! The woman’s black curls were damp against her head. The smell of hydrogen sulfide steamed from her skin.
“I can’t feel anything,” Dwayne yelled.
The door opened. Jean-Marie, Adric, and the third man dragged in the other three operators. They looked even worse than the woman Lynn was treating.
“Medics are on the way. They said to focus on the ones we can save.” Jean-Marie’s words tapered off until they were almost inaudible.
Lynn pumped the woman’s chest through her thick blue shirt. Nothing. When she glanced up she saw heads shaking. Lynn kept pushing. “We have to try harder!”
“Christ, none of ’em has a pulse or is breathing,” Dwayne said.
“My man’s got a heartbeat!” Adric shouted. “Help me!”
Lynn pumped the woman’s chest again. She hadn’t breathed nor had her heart pumped a beat during the time Lynn had been with her. Probably not for fifteen to twenty minutes before that.
“We have to help the ones we can save,” Jean-Marie repeated.
Lynn made the horrible choice she had to make and placed the woman’s hands across her chest. Her palms were already cool. She shuddered and moved next to Adric. Her throat burned with the sob she stifled.
Adric’s black forehead glistened. He shook the man’s thin shoulders. “Are you okay?”
No response.
Lynn tilted the man’s head back and lifted his chin to establish an airway while Adric put his ear next to the man’s nose and mouth so he could listen and watch his chest.
The door to the adjacent room opened and other operators crowded in. “What’s wrong?” “Who’s hurt?” Voices rose to shouts.
“Get them out!” Lynn heard panic in Dwayne’s yell. The voices stilled and the door closed. The heat from the extra bodies abated.
Pinching the man’s nose shut, Adric breathed twice into his mouth.
“Come on buddy, you can do it,” Lynn implored.
“Breathe, goddamn you! Breathe!” The big engineer knelt over another body nearby.
Still no response. Adric repositioned the man’s head and blew breath into his lungs again.
Lynn heard a gasp. Thank God. She clamped an oxygen mask to the man’s mouth. The man gasped several times more and coughed. Every person in the room sighed deeply, as if holding extra air for him. Adric leaned against the lockers.
“He’s going to make it,” Dwayne said.
The applause stopped as soon as it started. We saved only one, not five. The muscles in Dwayne’s arms convulsed.
Lynn stood up and moved back to the woman she’d brought in. The woman wore no ring because safety rules forbade jewelry. Wonder if she’s married. Has kids. Sifting out thoughts of her own boyfriend and his children, she clasped the woman’s cold hands, then those of each of the three men on the floor nearby. Tears she’d been trying to hold back gathered in her eyes.
“Let’s get him next door to the monitor room and wait for the ambulances,” Dwayne said. “It’s not good for him to see these others.”
“But Reese, would you . . .?” Lynn didn’t have to complete her question before Reese nodded. He would wait behind with those they hadn’t found fast enough.
She and Adric carried the lightly built man into a room lit with dozens of glowing screens. They laid him on a pallet of raincoats.
“Dwayne, have you met this man?” Jean-Marie asked.
“Armando Garza. Contractor, but he used to work here full-time. Knows Centennial as well as any of us.”
The now-conscious man stiffened, tried to sit up, and fell back. He clutched the oxygen to his face and took longer, deeper breaths.
“Easy, cher,” Jean-Marie said.
After a few minutes, two operators boosted Armando up and led him to the eyewash basin.
“Water’s the next course,” Dwayne murmured to silent nods. They’d all seen mild hydrogen sulfide poisoning before. Usually the victim went to the hospital, rested awhile, then stood up and went back to living. This was much worse.
The bigger operator braced himself and clamped his arms around Armando’s chest. The other held the man’s head over the basin. They opened jets and water shot into his face. Armando jumped back when the water hit his eyelids, then slumped to allow his face and eyes to be flushed.
Lynn asked Adric what had happened.
“My operators went out about eight thirty to do a pipe inspection. I can’t believe it. Not all four . . .” He stopped, choked.
A cramp knifed through Lynn’s calves. A cramp as fast as a light switch being flipped. She stretched up and down through her toes to ease the excruciating clutch, a physical betrayal of the emotion she always had to hide.
After a few minutes over the sink, the husky operator tilted the man’s head back and the other rinsed his eyes with saline solution. Then they led him to a shower around the corner.
A squinty-eyed man pushed in next to Adric. His mustache almost covering his big teeth, he was the stranger who’d helped Jean-Marie and Adric with the victims. “Like Adric said, the operators had left for rounds. Armando was standing around telling jokes and got a call-out to the cracking unit. When he radioed his crew chief for help, they notified us because we were a half mile closer. Said they thought it was H2S.”
Adric recovered his voice and picked up the story. “After the call, I had my crew turn off flow, then sound the alarms.”
“I’m glad you were right on top of the situation,” Lynn said.
Turning off the oil had also cut the gas flow to the flare and explained the flare’s dimming they’d seen from the conference room, as Lynn had assumed. This refinery still has its expert operators. But what caused the leak?

Free Kindle Nation Shorts — March 2, 2011: An Excerpt from The Haunted e-Book, A Novel by JL Bryan

“Read any good books lately?”
We’ve all been asked the question hundreds of times, but once you begin reading J.L. Bryan’s The Haunted e-Book that question is likely …
To send chills up your spine?
To creep you out?
To ruin e-books for you forever?
Probably not the last thing, but prepare to be scared.
“Think Ur Meets The Bookman’s Promise.”

By Stephen Windwalker
Editor, Kindle Nation Daily
©Kindle Nation Daily 2011
I don’t know about you, but as a reader, a former bookstore owner, and an author, I’ve always been a sucker for books about books … about booksellers … about libraries … and lately, about ebooks.
I loved Stephen King’s Ur and I was thrilled when John Dunning’s Cliff Janeway books became available on Kindle.
But King’s novella was short and had a bit of the “made-to-order” product placement about it, so now I’m happy to share with you the news that a terrific full-length novel by JL Bryan has become available on the Kindle and … yes … about the Kindle. And it’s a real treat to be able to share this 5,000-word free excerpt with you through our Free Kindle Nation Shorts program!
The author is in the midst of a blog tour to promote the book, and he is giving away some nice prizes. You can find out more about those here — http://www.jlbryanbooks.com/thehauntedebooktour.html — but to be totally truthful I should let you know that I called him up at home this evening and told him “Jeff, I’m happy to mention the blog tour and the giveaways, but you’ve got a terrific book here and I don’t want the other stuff to get in the way of that/”
So here at Kindle Nation, we’re all about the book, and here it is. Enjoy….
by JL Bryan
4.1 out of 5 stars – 10 Reviews
Kindle Price: $2.99
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
UK CUSTOMERS:
Click on the title below to download

Here’s the set-up:
Dee escapes her dreary librarian job and unfaithful boyfriend by reading romance and fantasy on her Kindle.
She tries The Haunted E-book, the story of a 19th century tramp printer whose ghost awakens whenever someone reads a book he created. The ghost stalks his readers and threatens them with death if they stop reading the book. Though she doesn’t usually like ghost stories, Dee can’t stop herself from reading it.
Then Dee learns the stories in the book are true, the malevolent ghost is real, and Dee might be the next character to die.
excerptFree Kindle Nation Shorts – March 2, 2011
An Excerpt from
The Hauted e-Book
A Novel by JL Bryan
Copyright © 2011 by JL Bryan and published here with his permission

  1. CHAPTER ONE
“Don’t that thing hurt your eyes?” asked the children’s librarian, Cloris Measley. Cloris was in her fifties, her hair a shade of red that could not be found in nature.
“No, it’s not like a computer screen.” Dee tapped the Amazon Kindle in her hands. “It’s made just for reading.”
“Seems like it’d hurt your eyes.” Cloris sat across from Dee at the picnic table.
Dee was enjoying her half-hour lunch break. The picnic table behind the library was under a stand of old oak trees, and it offered the only shade in sight on a hot September day.
“These kids are worse every summer,” Cloris said. “I can feel my hair turning gray. Mind if I smoke?”
Dee shook her head.
Cloris glanced back over her shoulder at the back door of the library, then slipped a Virginia Slim into her mouth.
“Sorry,” Cloris said. “Have to sneak when I can. Leslie still don’t let me smoke on library property. Which don’t make it easy, listening to kids holler and cleaning snot off their books.”
“I’m sorry,” Dee said.
“I’m sorry for you, too,” Cloris said. “You should have been promoted to Circulation Librarian II. I don’t see why Maggie got it, she’s not all there.”
“Maggie’s in Leslie’s bridge club,” Dee said. “I’m not, and I haven’t been invited, either.”
“Would you play, if they invited?” Cloris asked.
“No!”
They both laughed.
“And how is that boyfriend?” Cloris asked. “You still seeing Justin?”
“I see him, but I’m not sure he sees me,” Dee said.
Cloris gave an uncomfortable laugh. She looked at the Kindle and changed the subject. “What are you reading?”
“It’s a seventeenth-century romance,” Dee said. “The Pirates of Paris.”
“Why on Earth would there be pirates in Paris? There’s no ocean.”
“They have to spend their loot somewhere,” Dee said. “In this case, the rugged pirate captain Jacques Forquois is wooing a young noblewoman, Mireille. But she’s engaged to an aristocrat, the Marquis du Chappelier. So they have to meet in secret places, brothels, playhouses…”
“How exciting!” Cloris said. “Do they got it as a real book, too? Or just a computer thingy?”
“I’m not sure.”
The back door of the library swung open, and branch manager Leslie McKenna stood there, hunched over her cane. Cloris heard the door open behind her and visibly panicked, looking down at the burning cigarette in her fingers.
“Cloris?” Leslie asked. “Cloris, what are you doing back here?”
“I’m just looking at Dee’s new computer book whatcha-callit!”
“There are two children in need of reading recommends,” Leslie sang. “Why don’t you come in now?”
Cloris crushed out her cigarette.
“Now, Cloris!”
Cloris crammed the cigarette butt down between two boards of the picnic table. She stood, brushed off, and gave Dee a nervous smile.
“Cloris!” Leslie yelled.
“Good luck,” Dee whispered.
Cloris walked to the back door of the library. Leslie took up most of the doorway, leaning on her cane, and refused to move. Cloris had to turn sideways and squeeze past her. Leslie sniffed at Cloris and shook her head.
Leslie cast Dee a suspicious look, then slammed the heavy metal door.
Dee’s cell phone rang, for the third time today. Justin. She didn’t want to hear about how he was working late again, or going out to Danny O’s with the boys again. She could tell when he was lying.
Instead, she turned off her phone and dove into the world of charming pirates, French court politics, and eager Mireille’s heavy and passionate bosom. It was her only escape from Leslie, from Justin, from the hot and dying town of Elmer, Georgia, where she’d gotten trapped somewhere between the end of college and the start of her real life, the one that would begin on some yet-to-be-determined day on the future.
Dee read:
“I will love you forever,” Jacques proclaimed, grabbing Mireille hastily in the wardrobe room of the theater. Out beyond the stage, the audience sighed at a sad moment in the play.
“But we cannot be together!” Mireille sighed. “My father would forbid it!”
“In my world, the world of pirates, nothing is forbidden,” Jacques breathed suavely, caressing her.
“Oh, but in my world, everything is!” Mireille sighed.
The rest of her day at the library was as dull as the morning had been. Dee suffered under the hawkish stare of Leslie, who had never adjusted to the county assigning a black woman to work in her library, though Dee had been at the library four years now.
Dee went home to an empty apartment. It was small, tucked into the upper corner of a rundown brick building. The building had four apartments in all, and the two downstairs had been empty as long as she’d lived here.
The apartment was cramped but comfortable, with secondhand bookshelves along most of the walls. These were stuffed with poetry, plays, fantasy, romance. Most of her books were tattered paperbacks scrounged from flea markets and garage sales.
Dee walked into the kitchenette and pressed the automatic can opener. Skitter bounded into the room as fast as his heavy belly would allow. The fat orange cat must have been sleeping in her bed, or on the cool tiles of her bathroom floor, since those were the only other rooms in her apartment.
“There you are.” Dee scratched Skitter’s neck. He purred while she poured dry food in his bowl. “You decide to make an appearance?”
She was convinced Skitter had the power to turn invisible. Even in this tiny apartment, he could disappear for days at a time. The only evidence of his existence would be the magically disappearing cat food and the magically dirty litter box.
“Where do you think Justin is?” she asked Skitter. “Working late, grinding the sausage? Shooting pool with the guys? What do you think?”
Skitter had no opinion. He crunched into his cat food.
Dee called Justin’s phone, but he didn’t answer.
“Justin, we don’t have much to eat,” she said to his voice mail. “Since you’re at the grocery store, grab us something. Not pickles and bacon again, either.” She hung up.
He probably wasn’t at the Farm-N-Fresh Grocery Mart, making yet another “special meat order.”
Ella Rae was a cashier at the Farm-N-Fresh. She was twenty-four, ten years younger than Justin, but always looking at Justin with her chest poked out, twirling her purple hair around her fingertip and snapping her gum. Dee saw how she winked at him, how she punched him in the arm and giggled, and now Dee couldn’t stand to shop at Farm-N-Fresh anymore. She had to drive twenty miles to the Kroger in Americus.
Dee picked up the Kindle again.
Jacques kissed her full, ripe, red, strawberry-like lips. He kissed her with great ardor, caressing her curvaceous bosom.
“Oh, Jacques,” Mireille sighed. “You are such a dangerous and manly pirate.”
“I can’t do it anymore, Skitter,” Dee said. “This book is too stupid.”
Skitter licked his paw indifferently.
“I’m sick of romance. It’s all bullcrap. In real life, your boyfriend isn’t a dashing and suave pirate who ties roses to your doorknob as a secret message. He slices bologna at the Farm-N-Fresh and forgets to wear deodorant and then he sleeps with some drugged-out checkout girl and pretends you don’t know it. And you wonder what you were thinking, dating a townie.”
Skitter jumped into the easy chair and curled up. He closed his eyes.
“Thanks for your support,” Dee said.
She picked up the Kindle and clicked the bookstore link. Dee’s neighbor BJ had a wireless internet thing, and let her feed it off it. She supposedly paid him a few dollars a month for this, but he never really accepted the money.
Dee stared at the bookstore page. She wanted something dark and twisted. Like real life. Something where the characters seemed real, everybody suffered, and nobody was happy at the end.
This mood eventually led her to the horror section. Each book had a cover graphic, so this meant sifting through pages of skulls, castles, candles, tombstones, sinister red churches, countless pale and sallow vampires.
One oddball book caught her attention. The cover was plain and black-no lingerie models dripping blood from their mouths, no rotten hands jutting out of the grave. The title, in ghostly letters, was:
THE HAUNTED E-BOOK
By Unknown
Dee snickered at the title. It might as well be called The Evil Penguin or The Demonic Shoelace. And the author hadn’t even put his name on it, a pretty bad sign.
She decided she could use a laugh, so she downloaded the free sample chapter of the book.
The first page of the book said:
WARNING: Publisher not responsible for any supernatural incidents, events or hauntings that may result from reading this book.
“Ha!” Dee said. “Cute. Skitter, you should read this.”
Skitter was asleep on his back, snore-purring, his fluffy white belly exposed to the world.
Dee pressed the arrow button to flip the page. The story began:
THE HAUNTED E-BOOK:
Chapter 1.
Madison was alone on the seventh floor of the university library. She sat at her favorite table, by the windows. Outside, the night was as dark as death. The full moon stared at her like a cold yellow eye, watching and waiting.
Madison had not noticed as the handful of other students left over the past hour, taking their books and notes with them. She liked the ninth floor because it was quiet, especially at night. The floor held odd-sized books, like art folios. It was the top floor, the most remote.
She liked being away from everyone. People always stared at the twisted pink burn scars on the left side of her face and down along her neck.
If she had noticed everyone was gone, she would have been glad. The library was her retreat from her annoying, peppy roommate, who didn’t mind having loud and squealy sex with her boyfriend Tyler, even when Madison was trying to sleep in the same room.
Madison didn’t notice she was alone because she was absorbed in the Kindle reader in her hands. The story had completely drawn her in, and she lost all sense of her own surroundings. She was reading something called The Haunted E-book. It was kind of stupid, but also kind of scary. And it was getting scarier.
Madison read: 4
THE HAUNTED E-BOOK:
Chapter 4.
Parker stalked away from her friends, who still laughed at her from the food court. Her face was red and angry. It wasn’t funny that Brenden had cheated on her with Misty. She didn’t see how that was funny at all.
To be alone, she walked down the mall’s south wing, where a lot of the stores had permanently closed. The storefronts were either covered in plywood or just staring out like blank glass eyes. The only two stores still open up here were a Candy’s Candles and a Buddy’s Book-A-Rama.
Parker glanced into Candy’s Candles. It was illuminated only by candlelight, with dozens of odors swirling together-jasmine, vanilla, cherry blossom, chocolate, musk. The combination of so many smells was sickening.
Inside the store, an elderly clerk slumbered at the checkout. Her wrinkled eyelids were closed behind her glasses, which had slid down to the tip of her nose.
Parker walked past the candle store. At the end of the south wing was Buddy’s, her favorite place when she was a child. On Saturdays, they used to have people dressed like famous book characters, Peter Pan or the grinning Cheshire cat. Their children’s book section was a wonderland that took up half the store, with fairy castles and furry hand puppets.
She’d lost interest in Buddy’s around age eleven, when she started middle school. Now she stepped into the store for the first time in five years.
Buddy’s had not thrived. The linoleum floor in the grown-up part of the store was filthy and cracked. The bright orange carpet in the children’s half was spattered with dark stains, and some areas were frayed and showed the concrete floor beneath. The handpainted castle was peeling and dusty.
The Storytime Land behind the cheerful picket fence, where the children’s specialist used to read stories to young customers, had once been decorated with brightly colored chairs and cushions. Now it was a storage area crammed with cardboard boxes, bulging garbage bags and empty rotating paperback racks.
Puppets lay strewn on the floor of the children’s section like bodies after a war. She saw Larry the Lion, his arm sheared off, his eyes gouged out, his mane clotted with years of snot. The smiling puppet clown Pupeeto had a pencil stabbed through his mouth, and it looked like he was choking on it.
Half the lights were out overhead, and the remaining yellow fluorescent bars sizzled and flickered, giving the store a shuddering, nauseating look. She didn’t see any customers, or any employees in their smiley-face yellow Buddy’s Book-A-Rama aprons. The four checkout lanes were empty, their jaunty twirling lights switched off.
Parker walked past aisle after aisle of books, seeing no people. The bookshelves seemed understocked and dusty, with large empty gaps in every section. Torn books were scattered on the crumbling linoleum floor.
“Hello? Is anybody here?” Parker heard herself ask. It was a stupid question. The store was open, so obviously somebody was here. They must be working in the back. A great chance to swipe something.
Parker walked down the horror aisle, looking for books with the scariest, goriest covers. She didn’t care about reading them, but she wanted Brenden to see her reading books like that. Then she could look up at him with cold, glaring eyes over a black book with snarling red corpses on the cover, like she was plotting revenge. Maybe she could do that at school Monday.
She found the grossest zombie paperback the store had, with a guy’s face eaten up by maggots. She looked around. She didn’t see any cameras, or any of those weird rounded mirrors she was convinced might be cameras, too.
She shoved the book down the front of her jeans. She adjusted her wide belt, then quickly covered the bulging waistband of her jeans with her shirt.
A loud squeaking, clacking sound echoed through the store the moment she had the book covered. She looked up again, panicked, but still couldn’t see any sign of security cameras. No way anybody had seen her swipe the book way back here in the aisle.
Parker strolled as casually as she could out of the aisle, listening to the squeaking and clacking as it slowed down. She stepped into the open central space of the store.
She still didn’t see anybody, but she found the source of the squeaking. In the story-land-turned-storage-area, one of the empty paperback racks was spinning. Something tacked to it kept clacking against the other empty racks. It looked like someone had tied something to the rack, given it a hard spin, and then run away.
Parker walked past some cheesy display with a big projection screen above it. She stepped over the fence into the children’s section and approached the rack as its spinning slowed. It stopped when she reached it. Whatever had been tied to the rack was behind it, caught on another rack.
Parker lay her shaking hand on the rack. She slowly turned it until she saw what had been attached.
It was Pupeeto the clown, pencil impaled through his mouth, pinning him to the rack.
She held the clown in her hand. Its big orange wig and puffy shirt buttons were stiff with years of kid saliva. One button eye dangled by a thread.
“Pupeeto?” she said aloud.
There was a loud clattering, then a crash. Parker spun around.
The store was closed. The wire mesh security wall had just rolled down across the entrance, trapping her inside.
“Hey!” Parker yelled. She ran to the mesh and tried to pull it up, but it wouldn’t give. It felt locked into place. She pulled as hard as she could, and the middle fingernail on her left hand bent backward and snapped.
“Ow!” Parker slapped both palms against the wire security mesh. “Hey! Somebody help me!” she yelled into the deserted south wing of the mall. Empty storefronts stared back at her.