Undying – Out Now
Today’s the day. The next chapter in Nate Garrett’s story is out on Kindle and Paperback. Pick it up from whichever Amazon or bookstore you’d like to use.
Undying – Chapter One
Here’s the opening chapter of Undying, the next Hellequin Universe novel, out on 30th January.
Available to pre-order on Kindle now (paperback on release, and audible coming in the future).
Chapter One
Village of Anfarwol
Everything leading up to this moment had been a terrible idea.
It should have been an easy assignment. Eric Pointer had been asked to join a group of investigators looking into a decades-old serial-killer case, where the killer appeared to have resurfaced for the second time since the original murders nearly forty years earlier.
He’d been quite excited, primarily because it had been the first big story assigned to him since getting the job at the national newspaper, and also because everyone knew serial killers equalled sales. Besides, it was in Wales, and everyone told him how beautiful that part of the world was and how much fun he was going to have.
Turned out, it was much less fun when running through a forest pursued by… honestly, Eric wasn’t sure. Monsters. Killers. The devil himself. Any of those would sound correct to him. All he knew was that being in their company was going to get him killed, because it had gotten everyone who had come with him killed.
At least, he assumed they were all dead. He saw bodies, the blood, heard the screams. He hadn’t stayed around long enough to check that all of his companions were among the victims. If he’d done that he’d already be among their number.
Eric narrowly avoided a low branch only to run into another, which all but wiped him out, sending him sprawling on the muddy ground. It had rained for two weeks straight which, frankly, was the British summer all over, although it was also quite low on Eric’s immediate problems.
He scrambled back to his feet, almost smacking his head on the branch again, and heard the call of someone behind him. It was followed by loud crashing, as though something had just torn trees apart in their effort to get at Eric.
It was a quick thirty-minute drive back to the village of Anfarwol. Back to safety. He just had to get out of this damn camp first, had to get back to the car park. Why was the car park so goddamned far from the camp?
Eric ran mostly on adrenaline and a burning desire to not become another statistic in the number of dead. He was soon avoiding more trees, shrubs, roots, and large rocks. He slipped more than once but by the time he saw the sign for the car park—lit by the moon—he could have kissed it.
He raced across the gravelled parking area, ignoring the other four vehicles, and stopped by his brand-new burgundy Honda Civic. He fumbled the key from his jacket pocket, dropped it twice into a puddle at his feet, extricated it with an unpleasant wince, took a deep breath, and pressed the unlock button. The indicator lights on all four corners flashed. The car did not unlock.
The sounds of crashing through the dark forest sent panic jolting through Eric.
He pressed the button twice more in quick succession, although neither time had any other effect than more flashing orange lights. He tried the door handle, tried the button again, and only then realised he had the key fob turned upside down, and he’d been attempting to unlock the car’s boot.
Someone burst out of the forest, standing on the opposite side of the parking lot to where Eric stood wide-eyed and frozen in place. His brain screamed at him to move, to get in the car, but his body was having none of it. Eric had always wondered if he would be a fight, flight, or freeze type of person, although he’d have preferred to find out when his life wasn’t in danger.
The… thing that arrived in the parking lot held a machete in one hand, the moonlight glinting off the blade, having the unfortunate side effect of showing the blood that drenched it.
That did the trick to Eric’s brain. He tore the car door open, practically jumped inside, and managed to hurt his finger by smashing it down on the start/stop button. The car’s engine came to life as the thing with the machete just remained in place, making no movement toward Eric.
The car’s headlights illuminated the monster. Nearly seven feet tall and broad shouldered, it wore what looked to Eric like leather armour with buckles and metal accents all around it. A mask covered its features, and it wore a large-brimmed, black hat, although as its gaze lingered, Eric froze again. For a moment, he just sat in the car, the lights showcasing the entirety of the murderer before him.
Eric shook his head, put the car in first and sped out of the car park.
It wasn’t until he was out of the forest and back on a main road that he considered someone hiding in the seat behind him. He slammed on his brakes, and almost threw himself out of the car, standing ten feet away from it as rain continued to pelt him. Eric tentatively stepped up to the car and tried to look in the back but the rear windows were tinted, and he couldn’t see anything. He took hold of the car door handle, and practically wrenched it open, revealing… an empty back seat.
Eric placed his head against the roof of the car and let out a huge sigh of relief before remembering there was a murder a few minutes behind him. He scrambled back inside and drove off into the night toward the village of Anfarwol.
The village was home to four thousand people, and one of the United Kingdom’s safest, with the worst crime committed in the years since the camp murders, being the graffiti artist who spray painted a black sun on the wall of the civil hall.
Eric’s plan was simple. Get back to his Bed and Breakfast, get his stuff, and get to London and the relative safety it offered. Compared to where he’d just been, he’d have taken a war zone to live in right now. His mind flashed back to the news only a few years ago, where London had been a literal war zone. He’d been at university at the time, and had missed out on covering it, but considering the number of people who had died to overthrow an insane Greek Goddess, he’d probably been best sat in Edinburgh and watching it all unfold on the news.
The entire world had been at war with Avalon, with people who felt themselves above humanity, who wanted to rule them. A war only occasionally fought in the light; London, Washington, Portland, being three of the big battles that had taken over any news networks still able to show the truth.
The war was over, evil had been vanquished, and those humans who had hitched their wagons to the invaders had been arrested, tried, and imprisoned, or—if you were powerful or rich enough—quickly and quietly removed from public life. Entire news channels had vanished overnight, as had newspapers, social media platforms, and a host of online personalities who helped Avalon spread fear, misinformation, and frankly aided in the deaths and imprisonments of many of their own people.
Eric forced his mind to push those thoughts aside. He’d always wondered how the people after a world war had just gotten back to their lives, and it turned out that five years was actually a long time for those who only saw the war on tv or read about it online. People want to forget and that’s easy to do when you were always fairly safe to begin with.
Slamming on the car brakes at the last second, Eric took a moment to breathe. He’d almost missed his turn into the village, and would have ended up in the middle of nowhere. He hadn’t even set up his Satnav, primarily because he had no idea where his phone was. Back in the forest, or maybe at the campsite. He had no way of contacting anyone until he got back to a landline phone.
“Inform the police,” he said to himself softly. “That first, then run.”
He sat at the junction for a few more minutes as he tried to figure out a way to inform the police and run, but he was pretty sure that wouldn’t look good in the police report. Besides, at least then he’d have the police with him. He’d feel much safer.
Sixty seconds later, and Eric had decided that yes, the police really were the best idea. So, with much trepidation in his soul, he turned the wheel toward the village, and continued on through the winding country roads – dark and foreboding only illuminated by the headlights of his car.
Considering it was nearly four in the morning, Eric wasn’t surprised to find the village of Anfarwol was asleep. He drove at a normal speed along the main road, trying to remember the way to the police station. It took him three wrong turns before he got it right, and was practically overjoyed to see the lit-up, white and blue Police sign outside of the station itself.
The building was of Georgian design, and much like a lot of the village appeared to be lost in time. The newest buildings were, at their newest, sixty years old, and the oldest were centuries, if not more.
Eric parked his car out front, got out, and felt the overwhelming urge to burst into tears. He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and decided that breaking down in tears wasn’t going to get him any safer, and ascended the six steps to the large, glass front door.
When he stepped into the reception area, the warmth of the central heating washed over him. Eric was cold, wet, bloody, and miserable, but that warmth made things feel a tad better.
There were a selection of six chairs in the reception area, three next to a door marked Private, and three opposite it, next to a cork board adorned the leaflets of the local habitants. A reception desk sat directly in front of the entrance, and therefore in front of Eric. Behind the desk was a concerned looking man in police uniform. He was in his fifties with greying hair, a clean-shaved face, and eyes that said he’d seen a lot he didn’t want to talk about. He smelled vaguely of cedarwood and cigarette smoke, as though he’d had a smoke and rubbed his body with a car air fresher to get rid of the smell.
“Mister Pointer?” the police officer asked.
Eric took two steps forward, took a deep breath, and said, “They’re all dead.”
The next few minutes were a bit of a blur, but ended with Eric being taken through the Private door and into the police station proper. He was brought into a small canteen, given a bacon sandwich, cup of tea with enough sugar in it that it was probably no longer called a drink, and half a packet of custard cream biscuits on a paper plate.
Eric stared at the biscuits for a moment and chuckled, looking around to make sure he was alone. Despite what he’d been through, he chuckled again, feeling like he was at the world’s strangest birthday party.
The tea was nice, sweet, and smelled vaguely of camomile, which meant he guessed it was supposed to be relaxing. Probably defeated the object to pile it full of sugar. He drank it anyway, and realised the police officer he’d been talking to—although he couldn’t remember their name—had left his notebook on the table.
Eric looked around and risked a glance. The notebook was full of doodles, pictures of houses, of trees, of cars. He flicked through the pages until he paused and felt the horror of the night bubble back up to the top. There was a picture, a drawing in blue biro, of the thing that had killed the rest of his group. That had watched him get into his car, and drive away.
Eric’s reaction was immediate and violent, and he threw the notebook away, watching it bounce off the far wall. He got to his feet, grabbed a butter knife from the table, realised it was utterly dull, and picked up a fork instead.
He’d taken two steps when the world went dark, and he pitched forward onto the cold tiled floor. He was awake, but couldn’t move, his entire body refusing to do what it was told.
The main entrance to the canteen opened and two police officers—one male, one female—stepped inside. They were accompanied by a man in blood-red robes with a red fox mask covering his face.
“No,” Eric said as defiantly as he could.
The man in the mask picked up the fork from the ground beside Eric and showed it to him. “Be still now,” he said softly, almost soothingly. “No harm will come to you.”
“Killed the men with me,” Eric slurred.
“They fought and died,” the man said, straightening up. “You ran and lived. Well done. We were meant to grab you before it got dark, but you arrived late. Sorry about that. You’re here now, but we can’t have you asking for a phone or calling anyone.” He removed something from his pocket and showed it to Eric – his mobile phone, the screen destroyed.
Eric watched it tumble from the man’s hand onto the floor, the sound of it striking the ground seemingly lasting forever.
“You are drugged,” the man said. “Sounds will be quite strange to you. You may see things that were not there. I would like you to write my story, and for that you must live. Show a usefulness to me, and maybe you, too, can become part of what we’re trying to achieve.”
“Murdererererer,” Eric said, the word going on much longer than he expected it to.
“Good night, sweet Eric,” the man replied. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Eric closed his eyes… and opened them again in a strange place. A cell. Eric sat up, decided it wasn’t worth the pain, and lay back down again, looking around his new surroundings.
The cell was fifteen feet by fifteen, and had the bed he was laying on, a toilet, sink, and small desk with chair. Bars lined three sides of the cell, allowing him to look through into those on either side, although there was a five-foot gap between them. He couldn’t reach the adjacent cells using his own body without injury on his part.
The toilet and sink were against a bare stone wall at the rear of the cell, and had a small curtain on rails that could be pulled around them. Not much privacy, but better than nothing. There were no windows, so no way for Eric to figure out where he was in relation to the outside world.
Just beyond the bars of his cell was a hallway with steps at the far side. Eric risked sitting up again. This time it hurt less. There were five cells in all, his was the second from the right. None appeared to be occupied, although the meagre light from the torch—actual fire-lit torchlight—in the area outside of the cells kept everything in a dingy setting.
“You’re not dead,” a voice said from the cell beside his. “I did wonder.”
Eric fell out of the side of his bed, jarring his hip on the stone floor.
“Sorry,” the voice said. It had a British accent, although it was tinged with a little French.
“Where am I?” Eric asked, squinting for a better view of whoever occupied the cell.
“Ah, that’s a slightly more complicated question,” the definitely male voice said, but Eric still couldn’t see anyone. “Wales would be the easier answer. Near Llyn Tywyll Campsite.”
Panic threatened to overcome Eric. “No, I’d gotten away from here. No, no.”
“Hey,” the voice said, calmly. “You’re fine.”
“They murdered everyone,” Eric snapped.
“But not you and not me,” the voice said. “Means we still have a chance. Also, people are going to come looking for us.”
“How long will that be?” Eric asked.
“I’m not sure,” the voice replied. “I don’t think these cells were designed to keep people. I think they’re old animal pens. Maybe dogs, maybe something worse than dogs. They smell funny. I think I’d like to figure out what’s going on here before we’re rescued.”
Torches flickered to life in the gaps between the cells, bathing the cells in their light. Eric’s mouth dropped open as he got a look at the inhabitant of the cell beside his. “You’re a… a… a… Not human.”
“Was once,” the prisoner said. “Long time ago now.”
“You’re a fox.” Eric stared at the three-foot tall fox-humanoid. It wore black leather armour, similar to what Eric had seen on the murderer, although there was no way of confusing the two.
“Foxman,” the prisoner said, stepping towards the bars and holding out a hand-shaped paw. “Name is Remy.”
Eric stared at the hand.
“I do not bite, my friend,” Remy said. “Actually, that’s not true. But I won’t bite you.”
Eric put his arm through the bars and shook Remy’s hand. “Eric,” he said. “Journalist.”
Remy took his hand back, and smiled.
Eric’s face paled as he stared at the sharp teeth inside Remy’s mouth.
Remy stopped smiling. “Apologies, sometimes I forget that people aren’t used to a talking fox. As for my job, well, job titles are harder for me. A little bit of everything over the centuries.”
“And you think people are going to come find us?” Eric asked, clinging to that thread of hope.
Remy’s smile returned. “When my friends turn up, every single bastard responsible for our current predicament is in deep trouble.”
“You sure?” Eric asked.
“You ever seen a sorcerer when they’re mad?”
Eric shook his head. “Are you a sorcerer?”
Remy laughed. “No, just your local, friendly foxman.”
“And you have a sorcerer friend?” Eric asked, the hope in his voice tangible.
“A few of them,” Remy told him, a wicked smile spreading across his face, once again showing his sharp, white teeth. “And let me assure you, when they arrive, they’re going to fuck everyone’s shit up.”
Undying: The Next Hellequin Chronicles Story
A new chapter in the Hellequin Chronicles Saga.
Out on 30th January.
Pre-order on kindle now.
A new chapter in the Hellequin Chronicles Saga.
Nearly fifty years ago, the small Welsh village of Anfarwol was the scene of a series of brutal murders. Since then, multiple people have met with accidents, or gone missing never to be found, while those responsible have evaded detection for decades.
When Remy Roax is kidnapped while investigating the disappearances, Nate Garrett and allies are brought in to solve the mystery, and bring their friend home. Unfortunately for Remy’s abductors, they have no idea how bad of an idea it was to bring him to a place where he can cause nothing but mayhem.
Those Who Dwell in Darkness – Chapter 1.
I wanted to share the opening chapter to my upcoming book, Those Who Dwell in Darkness. Out on Kindle/Paperback, and Audible on 19th December. Pre-order links below. Enjoy
Oliver McCarthy had been, by his own admission, a truly terrible human being.
He’d been a thief, a liar, a killer, and probably a few other descriptors he couldn’t quite recall. He once bragged to a priest that he’d broken most of the Ten Commandments, although he couldn’t remember his mother and father enough to honour them. He was only little when they’d died.
He was twenty-nine when he became a vampire, and if he was honest, his awfulness had only increased.
At first, he thought it was going to be the best thing that would ever happen to him. Vampires were powerful; they were mysterious, dangerous, and above all, sexy. It had been the mid 1960s when he’d been turned. Oliver had been living in San Francisco at the time, taking part in free love and counterculture. He spent his days getting high and avoiding the law, usually at the same time. He figured that becoming a vampire would give him power to do what he wanted.
It hadn’t turned out quite like that.
The man who had turned him, the name of whom Oliver couldn’t remember despite having worked for him for nearly seventy years, had promised much and delivered very little.
That wasn’t to say that his life had been awful—he’d seen the world; he’d made a lot of money—but he was, after all these years, beholden to the man who had made him. And would be for the rest of his unnaturally long life, unless the man were to die, and the likelihood of a powerful vampire just dying was infinitesimally small.
Oliver sat on the bare wooden floor of a third floor flat in Whitechapel. A part of London once known for the murders of one deranged psychopath, and a place that had been gentrified over the decades. Anyone who had been around during the latter part of the nineteenth century would probably find the place unrecognisable. Hell, Oliver had only purchased the building in the 1980s, and he found Whitechapel unrecognisable to back then.
He’d always known that he was going to need a place to go should he have to escape. The London Borough of Tower Hamlets—which Whitechapel was a part of—wasn’t controlled by the vampires. He’d purchased the building under an assumed name, using cash, and rented out the bottom two floors to human tenants who had no idea who their landlord was. The third floor was officially an office space, although there was nothing in the flat that suggested it was used for anything but storage.
In reality, that was exactly what it was used for. Oliver had stored his valuables in the flat, retaining any information that he might need to save his life one day. Using one of two safes hidden under the floorboards to keep documents, fake passports, and cash, replacing the latter on a regular basis as currencies or notes changed. It had taken a lot of work to maintain, to keep hidden, but two weeks ago it had saved his life.
Oliver knew that his job was illegal. He was under no illusions that the man he worked for, the Boss, was not one of the good vampires. The Boss was involved in the creation of illegal vampires—those not sanctioned by the Assembly—in drugs, in spiked real blood packs, in extortion, gambling, and a host of other crimes that would probably get him a long stay in an Assembly prison.
It was the illegal vampires that were the big news, though. An operation decades in the making where people, paying obscene amounts of money, could bypass the long and often arduous official process of becoming a vampire. All of their documents looked official, because technically they were official—how, Oliver still didn’t know.
It had gone well for years. Until two weeks ago, the most recent experience, when it had all turned to shit. When some old man wanting an extended life had gone wrong, and had become a monster.
Oliver lay down on the floor and closed his eyes. It was dark outside, and the windows were triple glazed, but with his hearing, Oliver could still make out the sounds of cars, of people out celebrating. He needed to find a place to hide. Away from London. Away from the UK. Too many vampires in the UK. Not Europe either; that was too close. Anywhere that spent all year being too hot or too cold was out, too; vampires didn’t like the heat because it killed them, and they didn’t like the cold because it made the need to feed too much to handle.
He knew if his Boss found him, he’d kill him. Slowly. Oliver couldn’t go against his Boss; he was too well connected, too powerful, and while Oliver had killed plenty of people, he’d never hunted down and killed a powerful vampire. Besides—how could he hunt a ghost? Whatever psychic blocking had been done to his brain meant he couldn’t remember his Boss’s name, or what he looked like, and if he tried too hard it gave him a migraine. All he knew was that he couldn’t win that fight.
Besides, they’d somehow found out that his loyalties didn’t quite lie with his Boss. Fleeing was his only option.
“You don’t need to check on them,” Oliver said to himself, thinking about the two girls he’d managed to save from the catastrophe he’d just escaped. “Just run. Just run and don’t look back.”
Oliver tried to talk himself out of going back to the scene of the crime, so to speak. The two girls, Carla and Teresa, hadn’t expected to become vampires almost the same day a monster tried to murder everyone. His Boss had wanted a clean slate, had ordered Oliver to kill them both, but … well, he couldn’t. He’d brought them to his flat, but realised it was a terrible place to hide them, too risky, so he’d taken them to one of the halfway houses he’d arranged for new vampires in Soho. Somewhere his Boss knew nothing about, as Oliver was the only one who managed them. Though that wouldn’t be the case if his Boss found him and ripped the information from his mind. Hence he needed to escape. For his safety—and the girls’. Oliver hoped they would never be found. Or at least not found by his Boss or those who worked for him.
“Fuck,” Oliver snapped.
He could smell the blood on his jeans and hoodie, despite them being sealed in a ziplocked black bag. He’d risked showering when he’d first arrived, although he’d had to settle for a freezing cold shower, which had made him hungry. There was no blood in the apartment, synthetic or real. He never came back enough to make it necessary.
“Fuck,” Oliver snapped again, feeling the pangs of hunger. He’d managed to feed once in the two weeks he’d been running, and even that was only one synthetic blood pack that he’d had to steal from a vampire emporium in Shoreditch, because he wasn’t sure who was watching or tracking him. Avoiding the Assembly at all costs was his main goal now. That and anyone associated with his Boss. Basically, he couldn’t trust anyone, he was all alone, and he was, frankly, utterly fucked.
Oliver got to his feet and stretched. He was six feet tall, and thin. He’d been disappointed to discover that while he was super strong, if he’d wanted a toned and muscular physique, he’d have to actually work out. It seemed like something he should have been informed of before he’d said yes to becoming a vampire.
He had pale skin, short blond hair, and two weeks’ worth of beard growth. He wore midnight blue jeans, dark brown boots, and a plain black T-shirt.
“Right,” Oliver said to himself. Despite having been born in France, he was raised first in Amsterdam, and then in California; his accent was more the latter, although occasionally the Dutch came through.
He ran a hand though his hair and went through the plan. “Blood, then fleeing,” he said aloud as though that might make it a better plan. He had a fake passport in his pocket, along with ID and credit cards, all paid for some time in advance and hidden in the flat.
“Shit,” Oliver said, realising there was something else he needed to do. He removed the burner phone from his pocket and dialled one of three numbers that were kept on the memory: Danny.
It rang three times, and Oliver began to feel anxious that Danny wouldn’t answer. The feeling of relief when the phone was picked up was palpable.
“Oli,” Danny said, his voice a whisper. “Where the fuck are you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Oliver said. “I need you to get a pen and paper and write this down.”
“Wait a sec,” Danny said, sounding flustered. “Right, what is it?”
Oliver recited the address he’d left the two women. “Go there, find them, get them to safety.”
“Shit, Oli, the Boss is looking for you,” Danny said.
“I don’t care, Danny, just fucking do this, okay?” Oliver snapped.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Danny said. “Get the girls, keep them safe.”
“I mean it, Danny; they don’t deserve to be caught up in our shit,” Oliver said. “I know you like Carla, so I know you’ll do this. You tell anyone who asks that she’s your insurance. That should make sure any other gang members leave her alone and don’t ask too many questions. You wait until all this dies down, and you help them get out. The Boss has bigger issues than them to think about. Can you do that?”
Danny was silent for a moment. “Yeah, yeah, I can do that. Anything else?”
“No,” Oliver said, feeling as if this was the last time he would speak to the young vampire. “Keep your head down, your mouth shut, and the Boss won’t even bother with you. None of you were there when this happened. None of you are a liability. He needs you all to keep working normally. You don’t know anything, got it?”
“Got it,” Danny said. “Oli, take care.”
“Be safe, Danny,” Oliver said and hung up, feeling a weight lifted from his shoulders.
He looked over at the door and paused. He didn’t know where he was going to flee. He removed a piece of paper from his pocket with Fortress Falls written on it in blue pen, and stared at it. That was his last option, but it was an option. Could he really do that to her? Could he really walk back into Yvonne’s life and screw it over? He didn’t want to. The last time she’d seen him, she’d told him to fuck off and never speak to her again. That was thirty years ago. He hadn’t even known where Yvonne lived until he’d started digging a month ago.
Oliver screwed up the paper and tossed it aside, as his anger and need to feed threatened to overwhelm him. Damn it.
He flicked to the second number in his phone: Barbarous. He dialled it and waited for it to go to answerphone. “It’s all gone to shit,” Oliver said. “There’s nothing that will come back to you. I’m going to see Yvonne; I need to see her before I disappear. Just do me one favour, and tell her I’m coming. I need to destroy this phone; I don’t want anyone to track me. She’ll be able to contact me if you need, but it’s too dangerous to stay here. The Boss, he’s fucked my memory, I can’t remember his name, his face, anything about him. All I know is, he knows who I am, and he’ll stop at nothing to find me. He can’t risk me remembering something.”
Oliver hung up again, feeling exhausted. He needed blood, not from a live person, he was too het up for that, but from an emporium. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Nothing good was going to come from anything that would happen next. He took a second deep breath, not letting it go until he’d stepped out into the hallway beyond.
He closed the door, posted the key back through the letterbox—he wasn’t going to be needing it again—and carrying a black rucksack with everything he needed, mostly money, left his building once and for all.
It was a short jog through the early morning streets of the still fairly busy city to get to the emporium. All shops of the kind were named the same thing, at least in the UK; Oliver wasn’t sure about everywhere else.
The windows of the shop were covered in dark fabric, and the door was made of metal, with a small grate at eye height. The sign above the door that said Emporium was in neon purple, giving everything an ethereal glow. Oliver knocked, took a step back, and waited as the grate opened.
“Need to feed,” Oliver said, adding, “please.”
The grate closed, accompanied by the sounds of bolts and locks being moved before the door was pulled open. “Weapons?” the deep male voice asked.
“No,” Oliver said, turning to show his rucksack.
“Open it,” the man said.
Oliver wanted to argue, but he was hungry, and needed food more than he needed to snap at someone. He unfastened his rucksack, showing the change of clothes inside, moving them aside to show his passport. The cash was inside a zip-up part inside the bag that was impossible to see unless you knew it was there.
The door opened wider. “Come in,” the man said.
Oliver checked both ways on the empty road, finding nothing out of the ordinary, and stepped into the emporium.
The emporium smelled of lavender and pot, presumably the former to mask the latter. There was a till, behind which sat a middle-aged woman with dark hair and tattoos all over her arms. The large man who had opened the door took his seat next to a glass cabinet showing a variety of products that could be purchased; gummies, cakes, and sprays were all on show. Each one had a healing benefit to humans. Vampire blood cured cancers and helped humans heal from injuries; it had been a big part of why humans and vampires now lived side by side. Vampire blood had revolutionised the medical industry, although too much at once, and it could paralyse the human taking it. If they were lucky.
After someone figured out what happened if you mixed it with CBD, it revolutionised the drugs industry, too. It was heavily regulated and monitored, but it had brought humans and vampires closer together. And had oddly made vampires less feared by the human population.
Emporiums catered to the humans who wanted to use vampire blood as a way to get stoned out of their minds, or mellow out, just as much as for vampires who needed to feed.
“Two pint packs, please,” Oliver said.
“What age?” she asked.
“Whatever is cheapest,” Oliver said. Humans had to be at least eighteen to donate, and it was considered that the older the human, the better the blood.
“ID,” the woman said.
Oliver fished it out of his pocket and showed her the card.
She practically snatched it out of his hand, turning it over and over. “Oliver Dent.”
“That’s me,” Oliver said with a smile.
“You want anything else?” she asked, passing him back his ID and moving to a door behind her and opening it.
“No,” Oliver said.
The woman shouted the order into whatever was behind the door, closed it, and retook her seat behind the till. “You ever tried the gummies?” she asked. “They mix the vampire blood with CBD and flavouring. It’s a good mellow high, even for vampires. And all completely legal, of course.”
“I need to feed,” Oliver said by way of explanation.
“It’s been getting cold,” the woman said. “You need to be careful.”
“Always comes earlier and earlier,” Oliver said with a smile. He tried to maintain some kind of small talk, while trying not to show his anxiety.
There was a knock on the door behind the woman, and she got up to answer it. Someone passed her a small black wooden box, with the word EMPORIUM inscribed on the side in gold lettering. Oliver only saw the person’s arm, but he felt the power that came off whoever it belonged to. No one in their right mind ever attacked an emporium. They were considered one of the safest places to work for good reason.
“That will be fifty quid, please,” the woman said, placing the box on the counter.
Oliver smiled, removed two twenties and a ten from his pocket, and passed them over. Lots of vampires only used cash, as not everyone was able to move into new technology with ease.
The woman took the money, opening the till and placing it inside. “Please, enjoy your meal.”
“Thank you,” Oliver said, almost falling over himself in his hurry to get outside.
He walked down the street, carrying the box as though there were a bomb inside it, almost able to smell the blood it contained, despite that being impossible as it was sealed inside the box, and inside bags. All of his attention was on the box, so he didn’t see the two people—a man and a woman—step out of the shadows and begin to follow him. If he had seen them, he’d have dropped the box and run.
Oliver walked for five minutes before finding a small park that was encircled in a four-foot metal fence. There was a sign on the gate that said No entry after 9 PM in red lettering. Oliver leapt over the fence as though it weren’t even there, landing softly in the barely illuminated park, and walked through to find a wooden bench.
He placed the wooden box beside him and fought to calm his mind. He needed to feed. It was all he could think about. He pulled on the string on the box, and it unwrapped around the outside, letting him lift the lid to show the two blood pouches inside. Each one was exactly one pint. Enough to keep him going for two weeks before he would need to feed again, maybe three if he was sensible.
Oliver removed one of the pouches, twisted the top, and was almost overwhelmed when the scent of the blood reached his nose. He took a moment to savour it. It smelled good. Sweet.
He took a sip, letting it sit in his mouth before swallowing and feeling the warmth down his throat, letting it spread inside of him. Another sip, and another, and soon he was drinking it as if he’d just found water after a month in the desert. He drank the whole thing in seconds and let out a soft moan of contentment. It wasn’t the same as drinking from a person, as feeling that connection, but it was definitely better than nothing.
Oliver sat on the bench and let the feeling of euphoria flow through him. He was in a happy place, a comfortable place, but he knew it wouldn’t last.
He saw the man in the shadows outside of the park. He was watching him. Oliver didn’t let on that he’d seen him and instead removed the remaining blood pack from the box, placing it in his rucksack, before springing to his feet and running as fast as he could. He reached the outer fence, leapt over it, and narrowly avoided a woman in a dark coat as she tried to grab him. The fresh blood in his stomach made him slightly light-headed, but it also made him stronger, and faster.
Oliver tried to dodge a second grab, but the man who had been outside of the park leapt over the fence, catching him in the chest with a kick that sent him back toward the woman, who punched him in the side with enough force to break his ribs. Oliver scrambled away, putting distance between him and his attackers.
Both wore dark trousers, black boots, and blood-red shirts under slate grey jackets. A white badge on their lapels, with a red circle and a black infinity symbol across it, denoted they were Inquisitors. And the number of dots above the symbol denoted their rank. Both had three dots out of a possible six. They had been at their jobs for some time.
They both had bald heads, and while the man was several inches taller than his female companion, they were both over six feet in height. The woman had dark skin, while the man’s was pale; the streetlights illuminated the faint blue tattoos across their bald heads.
Oliver knew they were here to kill him. He ran.
He moved as quickly as possible, running across roads, dodging traffic which blared horns, drivers shouting a variety of obscenities in his direction. Oliver didn’t dare look back as he moved down an alleyway, leaping over strewn detritus, until he’d reached the end, and was almost hit by a van as he ran across the road.
“Fucking idiot,” the male driver said.
There was silence for a few seconds before the driver shouted, “You too, you fucking arsehole.”
Oliver risked a glance and saw the two Inquisitors in pursuit. He turned a corner, ran down another alley, and at the end turned right and sprinted as fast as he could down a street full of restaurants and takeaways. He stopped outside of a kebab shop, stepped inside.
“Can I help you?” the man behind the counter asked.
“Exit,” Oliver said.
“What?” the man asked, as though he hadn’t heard.
“Fucking exit,” Oliver snapped, showing his vampire side.
Fear filled the man, and he pointed through the kitchen behind him. Oliver didn’t need telling twice—he vaulted over the counter, ran through the building, and burst out into a small garden beyond. He clambered up and over the twenty-foot high wooden fence, landing in a garden behind the kebab shop. He continued on through the gardens until he reached the end of the street, and landed on a footpath next to a road. He crossed it, risking a look behind him, but saw nothing as he stood in the dark mouth of an alleyway and watched the road he’d just crossed. The two Inquisitors arrived at the end of the street a few hundred meters up the road.
Oliver needed to leave the UK tonight. Fortress Falls it was. He just hoped Yvonne would forgive him.
Pre-order links:
Atoned Chapter 1
For those of you who like to read the first chapter before one of my books is out, here’s the opening chapter for Atoned. Pre-order links at the end.
Chapter One
Sabas Gossard
Two-dozen large dorsal fins broke the water as fourteen people in military-spec combat armour stood on the bank of the lake tossing bodies in, the strong current immediately carrying them toward deeper waters where the sharks waited for their next meal.
Sabas Gossard watched the gruesome display from atop a stone bridge, a hundred feet above the lake itself. He continued to watch as the bodies were thrown into the lake. It was horrific and terrifying, but Sabas couldn’t turn away. He watched as the town of Onnab’s dead became food for those monstrous creatures beneath the darkness of the water.
A forest nestled beside the lake, and the barren tundra to the south stretched for hundreds of kilometres. Onnab had been built to allow the population to mine the nearby mountains, and they’d done a good job. Being so far from anything close to civilisation also meant they were in an excellent place to be manipulated into doing exactly what Sabas’ partners needed them to do.
Onnab had been home to a little over four thousand people. One of the few towns on the planet of Ocrion, the majority of which were all there to mine the vast mountain reaches. Men, women, and children living in a thriving mining community in a quiet part of Union space.
All dead.
When Sabas had been informed of the deaths, he’d assumed something a lot more dramatic than the empty streets he’d walked though upon arriving. He’d wondered why there were no corpses. No blood. No scent of death. Although there was a sharp, pungent odour he couldn’t quite place.
Doors to homes were open, food on tables that had been left to rot explained the caustic scent. Visi-screens showed nothing but static as the satellite system for the city of Onnab had been destroyed. No one had been able to get a message out about what had happened, and the vast distances and general distrust between towns meant people minded their own business. A saving grace.
It had been eerily quiet.
Sabas had the sudden need to be off the bridge but this was where he was told to meet her, and he was not about to become the first living meal for those monsters in the lake.
He was still a little unsure exactly what had happened to the town. He’d heard that everyone had died, and been told to come to the planet quickly, but no one had explained what he would be walking into. They’d said it was safe, but that was the extent of their imparted knowledge.
While Sabas had arrived on-planet with his three bodyguards, he’d left them back at the small space port. Two ships had been moored there, both squire corvette’s—sleek, red and chrome ships with seats for four—and both with extensive plasma burns around the engines and wings. Neither would fly again.
He was a little sad about that. The ships had done nothing wrong, and both looked like something he would have enjoyed flying. He cared little about the human or alien population of Onnab, but destroying expensive property for no reason just seemed… wasteful. If there was one lesson he’d actually learned from his father—other than shoot first—it was to not be wasteful.
It was a fifteen-minute walk from the port to the meeting point. Onnab was a warm city on a mostly warm planet, and the walk was almost entirely up a gentle incline. Sabas was not a small man. Prison had given him time to do little else but train his muscles, his mind, and devise ways he was going to kill everyone who had put in him in his cell. He stood six-and-a-half-feet tall, and weighed nearly three hundred pounds of almost solid, albeit surgically-enhanced muscle.
Sabas removed his navy jacket, and rolled up the sleeves on his white shirt, the latter of which was probably a size too small. Colourful tattoos covered both arms, depicting mythological creatures of a time when stories told of heroes testing themselves against such things. He’d always wanted to prove himself against the best. He’d done just that for several years before his arrest, although the vast majority of people he’d encountered just hadn’t lived up to expectations.
The sun was high in the cloudless blue sky, and it was as hot as it was going to get. Sabas wanted to be done by nightfall, when the temperature plunged and the creatures that lived in the nearby forest came out to hunt. He ran a large, tanned hand over his bald head, and wished that his contact would hurry up. Although, he would never tell her to do such a thing.
Then Sabas spotted his contact, and her own bodyguards. Alastia Sark was about as close to a monster as Sabas had ever actually met. She was probably the only person who genuinely scared him.
The woman was slight of build, with pale skin, and wore dark ion-armour—a lightweight plating useful against projectiles, but almost pointless against bladed weapons—with several buckles across her chest and stomach. The colour was a stark contrast to her white-blonde hair, which cascaded over her shoulders. A sheathed sword hung from her hip, and she wore two magnus bracers.
Sabas stared at the dark-brown, leather-fibre bracers covered in metal rivets – they gave an imposing look. About halfway up each bracer sat a gemstone roughly three inches in circumference; both were currently dark as there was no power being used.
He had not met Alastia in person for the entirety of his five years in prison, but he’d never forgotten she was a Sage – powerful beings, capable of using aether. This inherent power gave them a connection to The Aperture, a dimension of pure energy that sat alongside their own. The magnus bracer allowed Sage to control their aether. Without the bracer, the aether would be wild and unpredictable, dangerous to its user and everyone around them.
The gem in a magnus bracer was dark until the Sage activated their aether. Once that happened, the gem glowed a different colour—the same as their eyes—depending on the type of aether used.
There was a time when sage meant someone who had obtained wisdom. Sabas was certain not all Sage could be considered such things, but he did know that every single Sage was dangerous.
“See something interesting?” Alastia asked, her tone conversational with a hint of amusement at Sabas’ obvious discomfort.
“The people of Onnab?” Sobas asked, glancing at her trio of bodyguards. They wore predator-armour, specialised helmeted suits designed to protect the wearer from all but the most powerful of ordinance. They were all black, with three warm-grey slashes across their helmets and chests, as if a large creature had attacked them. The armour was heavy, and slowed the wearer, but it was quite literally designed to take a beating and hit you back harder than you could imagine.
All carried coil rifles, each one capable of firing a dozen incendiary projectiles within seconds. They were the weapon of choice for the Union military; reliable and accurate used to great effect over the centuries the Union Empire had been in power.
The three bodyguards looked over at Sabas, the red lenses on their helmets flashing as they stared. They made Sabas uncomfortable, not just because they were taller by at least a foot, and heavily outweighed him. Not because he didn’t have anything on him that could do little more than scratch them. And not even because they neither spoke nor removed their helmets so he could see their faces. What made Sabas uncomfortable was that no one should be able to get predator-armour except the highest ranks of the Union Empire. Even then it was kept to the military. How did someone like Alastia get hold of high-grade military tech? It was a question Sabas had asked himself often over the years.
“Had to get rid of them somehow,” Alastia said, leaning against the bridge parapet to watch the feeding. “The sharks here are voracious. I don’t actually know their type. I assume big shark is probably not their name.”
“Was this necessary?” Sabas asked, motioning to the town of Onnab. “Lots of dead.”
“Do you know why we work with you and your people?” Alastia asked.
“Because I’m rich, I have connections, and I don’t ask…” Sabas nodded. “Yes, fine, but on this occasion, you called me here.”
“A fair point,” Alastia agreed. “Walk with me.” She looked over to her guards. “Stay here.”
All three nodded once.
It took every ounce of self-control for Sabas not to stare at them as he walked by.
“You were in jail a long time,” Alastia said from where she walked at his side along the lengthy bridge. “But five years for killing a Warden is much shorter than I’d expected.”
“I was innocent,” Sabas said in a tone of someone who had repeated it so often he’d actually started to believe it. “They found the guilty party. They’d left an authenticated suicide note when the guilt finally got to them.”
“Your father pulled strings then,” Alastia said with a slight chuckle.
“My father,” Sabas said, his patience tested. “Did fuck all to get me out of prison. Do you plan on answering my questions, or is this some kind of therapy session?” The words left his mouth with more force than he’d meant, and fear rippled through him.
Alastia stopped walking, turned to Sabas and laughed. “If I didn’t find you so entertaining, I’d have killed you by now. Anyway, you’re right, I asked you to come here. Explanations are in order.”
“And the sharks?” Sabas asked.
Alastia’s smile made Sabas’ skin crawl. “I wanted to ensure you understand the order of things. Why am I here?”
The question caught Sabas by surprise, and he stayed confused for several seconds. “Isn’t that what I just asked?”
Alastia sighed. “A decade ago, we entered into an agreement. We both wanted the same thing, neither of us asked why the other wanted it, but that’s not the point. We needed muscle. We needed power. Onnab was chosen partly because of its relative size and population density, partly because the mayor here is a corrupt piece of horseshit, and partly because… well, because of what these idiots found.”
Sabas couldn’t help himself. “You’re talking about the catacombs?”
“I am,” Alastia said. “We have been taking people from this city for a decade. People who were officially stated as having died in the mountains, or from sickness. We took those the mayor said were drafted by the Union. Others without families who came here to work and earn a living, who wanted to escape Union eyes. We spiked their water, their food, we conducted experiments on this city unknown to a single inhabitant. We took the animals from their forests and did unspeakable things to them. The city of Onnab treated us well without ever really knowing it. We made them better humans, gave them enhancements that made them sleep less, eat less, work harder. We pumped hundreds of millions of credits into this little place. And the whole time we had no idea they were sat on something so… important.”
“I assume you’re not going to tell me more than I already know,” Sabas said.
Alastia looked over at him. “I could tell you, if you’d like, but then you’d have to go for a swim.”
Sabas glanced down at the fins again and decided quickly. “I’m good.”
Alastia looked slightly disappointed. “Smart man. I called you here to inform you that our deal is done. We have a gift for you, and it will be sent to your ship on your agreement. Other than that, we have concluded our involvement. We will remove all traces of your company, Expedited Systems, from this planet.”
“That’s it?” Sabas asked, struggling to stop his irritation despite how unwise it was. “I gave you vast amounts of money to make a weapon for me.”
“Which we have done,” Alastia said, her voice calm. “We gave you the preliminary findings years ago. You went to prison, and we continued in earnest to work on the project. We have made great strides in that time. The weapon, and all of the research we conducted on it, are yours. You will never come to this planet again. You will never mention this planet, or my name, or anything about our agreement. To anyone. Ever.”
Sabas knew Alastia was unarmed with conventional weaponry, but he also knew that she could kill him with a click of her fingers. He looked back at the trio of bodyguards, who were staring at them both. Sabas had been brought halfway across the Union Empire to be told his services and his money were no longer needed. Alastia had done this to show him exactly where he stood in the pecking order, and exactly who was in charge of this operation. She’d threatened his way of life. He hated and admired her for it.
“How’d you kill everyone?” Sabas asked. “Idle curiosity.”
“They killed themselves,” she said. “One of the strains we’d gotten into their system was designed to kill them should we need. Combined with a toxin we created and pumped into the atmosphere, we killed everything in that town in about three minutes. We took those we wanted out first, of course. The mayor for example. Those we felt could advance our work. Everyone else was expendable.”
“It’s been a pleasure,” Sabas said, unsure what else to say, and offered his hand.
Alastia stepped forward and shook his hand firmly. “If you ever speak of what was done here, I will personally hunt you down and make you watch as I kill your entire family.”
Sabas stared at Alastia’s smiling expression and tried to pull his hand away, but she kept a tight hold.
“And when I’m done,” she continued. “I will give you to our greatest scientific minds and they can flay you alive while you undergo every conceivable surgery to see what happens.”
“I understand,” Sabas said, no longer sweating just because of the heat.
Alastia’s smile widened, and she released his hand, stepping away. “Good. We’ll sort all of this out. There won’t be a trace, I assure you. Thank you for your assistance over the years, please do enjoy our gifts.”
Sabas couldn’t have gotten off that planet quicker.
Atoned: The Warden’s Book 1. Out 22nd September 2023 (Paperback will be out on the same day, no audible version yet).
Pre-order
Atoned: The Wardens Book 1.
My new book, Atoned is available to pre-order now.
Civil War tore across the Union Empire, leaving countless dead in its wake. It was a war started by one man, once beloved by the Empire. His betrayal still lingers in the memory of those who lived through it.
Decades later, his son, Felix Drake, is a Warden tasked with both protecting the ruling members of the Union Empire and its Council, and bringing those powerful and influential people to justice should they break the law.
Drake protects the very Empire his father sought to destroy.
When two members of a Council family are murdered, Drake and his team investigate, only to uncover corruption, resentment, and yet more death.
As the case deepens, Drake is forced back into a life he’d left long ago, bringing with it the same disdain and anger from the very people he’s sworn to protect.
However, he’s no longer a helpless child, and the people who try to intimidate him now are about to discover that Drake is so very much his father’s son.
Riftborn Book 3: A Talon’s Wrath
Out today, and here’s the first chapter for anyone who wants a look.
Links:
CHAPTER ONE
The last few months had been somewhat more . . . interesting than I was particularly comfortable with.
The rift-fused are not considered to have a particularly large worldwide population. There are, at a push, about nine million of us on Earth. And while that number has steadily increased over the millennia, it would take tens of thousands of years before they’re anything close to even one percent of the human population.
So, when a rift-fused is shown on TV arresting a Member of Parliament for the British government, people tend to notice. The fact that the person doing the arresting was me meant that for the last four months, I’d been far more recognisable than I was happy with.
After my brief appearance on every news channel in the UK, and quickly followed by a majority of them in the world, people had wanted to know more about me. Who was I? What was I? And where did I live? These were all questions that people online had tried to fish answers for. I trended . . . a word I was not happy to have occur or needed to know existed.
Thankfully, my flat in Brooklyn is under a different name, which meant no one could track me to my home. My friend Gabriel, on the other hand, and his church in Hamble, New York, received more visitors than ever before. In the end, we decided to use his church as a point of contact should anyone try to get hold of me. So far it had worked out, and after a few weeks, the media of the world decided there was something new to focus on and I was largely forgotten about.
Unfortunately, that still meant lots of people trying to contact Gabriel to find me, some friendly, some not. Gabriel was a big boy, though, and could more than handle himself.
I was putting all of that behind me for a few days as I was taken from New York and flown to London. There I was driven through the city in the back of a Range Rover to an eight-storey building near the Shard.
Ravi Gill, head of the UK Rift-Crime Unit, had told me beforehand that because the RCU were stretched thin, he’d requested a driver from the Met police.
The UK RCU branch had a real problem with people working for them who were essentially employed by MP Jacob Smythe, who’d turned out to be a crime boss. Ravi had done his best to ensure that only his people were still in the RCU, and I hoped, for everyone’s sake, that was the case.
The piece of work I was visiting was that very MP. After trying to open a permanent tear to the rift, which would have turned a large portion of the Hampshire countryside into an apocalyptic nightmare, I’d made my very visible capture of Jacob Smythe. He was the type to hold a grudge, and I wasn’t sure how he was going to react when he saw me for the first time since his arrest.
The building I was heading to was the front for an underground rift-fused prison. The facility had been in use since well before the rift-fused had been public knowledge. It housed a little over a hundred prisoners, although currently the number of inmates was single digits.
There were prisons like this all over the globe. Most of them out of the way, underground, or somewhere so heavily guarded that the world at large assumed it was some sort of government facility.
It was winter in England, which meant it was either windy and cold or windy and raining, or, on this particular occasion, both.
“I’m beginning to think we’re going to need an ark,” Ravi said as we dashed from where our cars dropped us off to the front entrance of the eight-storeys-high building.
Ravi was over six feet tall, with brown skin, a Cockney accent, and a tendency to wear exceptionally nice-looking suits. Today’s choice was dark purple, which I was pretty sure I could never get away with but looked like it was made especially for him. Ravi was also human, which was a rarity for the RCU, although it had no bearing on him being good at his job.
We walked through the large foyer, where two receptionists sat behind a large semicircle table in front of a bank of monitors showing various news networks all on mute. Half a dozen armed guards stood next to a set of metal detectors, in front of four lifts and two sets of stairwells. The guards were a mixture of human and rift-fused, all armed with both rift-tempered bladed weapons and guns.
Ravi nodded to them as we walked silently through the metal detector, with me having placed my dual rift-tempered daggers and anything else that might cause a beep, on a counter to the side, pausing to put it all away when done.
“I always find it amazing that you can just walk around anywhere with those things,” Ravi said after he used his security card on a reader next to the lifts.
“Things?” I asked as we entered the newly arrived lift.
“The daggers,” he said.
“Ah, well, the Guild medallion gives me a lot of leeway,” I said, talking about the copper-coloured medallion that hung around my neck. It was in the shape of a buckler shield with a sword and hammer crossing over each other in front, and a steel raven sat atop it. As the sole surviving remaining member of the Raven Guild, it had taken me a long time to start wearing it again.
“Can you take them on a normal flight?” he asked, selecting the button for the fourth underground floor on the panel next to the door.
I nodded. “It’s weird, but whenever Guild members fly and we’ve got whatever bladed or blunt weapon we use with us, people appear to be calmer about the flight.”
“I guess if there is trouble, having someone who can stop it makes people feel better,” Ravi said.
“Never given it much thought,” I said. “Normally, Guilds used private flights and cars.”
“Where’s your Guild’s private plane, then?” Ravi asked.
“Destroyed a long time ago,” I said. “Not entirely sure the Ancients would give me a new one.”
“You ever thought about re-forming the Ravens?” Ravi asked.
I nodded. “I did, but then Callie Mitchell and her turn-people-into-monsters scheme fell in my lap and here we are. Ji-hyun and Nadia send their apologies for not coming.”
“They okay?” Ravi asked.
“Ji-hyun is in charge of not just the RCU in New York but most of the eastern states of America’s offices, so busy . . . and frustrated. And Nadia is . . .” I thought for a second. “She didn’t want to come and see Jacob.”
“Because?”
“She wasn’t sure if her ability to see possible futures might make her see one where she’s meant to rip his head off,” I said. “Didn’t want to risk it.”
“Probably wise,” Ravi agreed.
The lift stopped and the doors opened slowly, revealing a small foyer with four more armed guards. The guards were stood either side of the only exit out of the foyer, a long corridor that led to a large metal door.
There were, like at the front entrance, metal detectors to walk through, although these were built into the corridor you had to walk down to reach the door. There were one-way mirrors on either side, and more guards sat inside, watching your heat patterns and X-rays.
A guard walked with us down the corridor, making us wait for several seconds while she turned a huge wheel on the door, which made a loud beep when it was fully rotated. A second beep, this one muffled, came through from the other side of the door, and with a loud hiss of air, the door slid into the wall.
More guards were behind the door, and like every other guard so far, they wore padded armour and black masks pulled up to their eyes. Anyone working there was always at risk of an inmate escaping and going after their family. Most rift-fused prisons used a mixture of human and rift-fused workers, and usually only the rift-fused or those in high positions were unmasked.
We continued down the corridor, past several closed doors that I was pretty sure led to more corridors and deeper parts of the prison, until we reached another foyer with more guards and a second large metal door.
“This is it,” Ravi said. “You ready?”
“Always,” I told him.
The door opened without any input from the guards, and a middle-aged man walked out. He had long grey hair, a matching beard, and was nearly seven feet tall with a barrel chest.
“Dr. Striker,” Ravi said, shaking the doctor’s huge hand.
“It is good to see you, Ravi,” Dr. Striker said with a Scottish accent.
“Is our guest ready for visitors?” Ravi asked.
“I think we should talk first,” Dr. Striker told us. He turned to me. “Lucas Rurik.”
I noticed he hadn’t offered me his hand.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
“I am curious about how you will react to my prisoner,” Dr. Striker said. “I am in charge of this prison and the inmates here, which means I am also in charge of their safety. Along with the safety of my people.”
“You think I’m going to try to kill Jacob now that he’s had his Parliamentary status removed,” I said.
“The thought crossed my mind,” Dr. Striker confirmed.
“I’m not going to kill him,” I said. “I just want to talk.”
“Yes, that’s another problem,” Dr. Striker said. “Why would Jacob only talk to you?”
“I’m lucky?” I suggested.
Dr. Striker didn’t smile. “I do not want him to say something that you retaliate to. I do not wish to have to clean up the mess of a Guild member. Again.”
And the penny dropped. “I’m not killing him or hurting him; I just need to talk to him,” I said. “Whatever issues you have with Guilds has nothing to do with me. I don’t murder people in custody.”
Dr. Striker stared at me for an uncomfortably long time before nodding and walking back through the open door with Ravi and me behind him.
Ravi shrugged.
The corridor behind the door had the same white walls and ceiling as everything else, but the black tiles had a green line running the length of the corridor.
“Jacob is at the end,” Dr. Striker said, leading us down the eerie corridor, past a dozen doors.
“This whole place is a bit of a maze,” I said.
“It’s why there are coloured lines,” Dr. Striker said without turning back. “Each of these doors leads to either a corridor or to cells. Jacob is the only prisoner in the Green Zone of the prison. We decided it best to keep him separate from anyone else in case his parentage was discovered and it caused . . . complications.”
“You know that his father is a Prime in Inaxia?” I asked.
“He told us,” Dr. Striker said as we reached the door. He turned back to me. “You swear you will not harm him.”
I crossed over my heart. “Promise.”
Dr. Striker removed a card key from his black suit jacket pocket and swiped it over a small card reader, which beeped. The door made a clicking noise and Dr. Striker pushed it open.
The room beyond was maybe fifteen feet wide by thirty feet long. There was a partition after six feet, dividing the visiting area from the cell. There were no doors or windows in the cell, although a lamp inside the cell and one in the visiting area were bright enough to illuminate everything.
There were three comfortable-looking leather chairs in the visiting area, and a couch that sat against one side of the room. A table on the opposite wall had various recording equipment on it, presumably for official visits for prisoners.
Dr. Striker walked over to the recording equipment and activated it, tapping a microphone. “Do not disable this,” he said to me.
I ignored him and walked over to the partition separating me from the cell itself. The cell had two rooms, both of which were visible from where I stood. One room had a bed, seating, a table, TV on the wall, and a small stereo system, while the second room had a toilet, sink, and shower. There was no such thing as privacy in these cells.
Jacob was lying on his bed. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been wearing an expensive dark blue suit and custom-made shoes. They were now replaced with a bright blue jumpsuit and dark grey socks. He was reading a newspaper, although I couldn’t see which one or what the article was about.
“Jacob,” Dr. Striker said from the electronics table.
“Yes, Doctor,” Jacob said without moving.
“You have visitors,” Dr. Striker said.
“Thank you, Percival,” Jacob said, placing his newspaper on the floor and swinging his legs off his bed. He’d grown a slight beard in the months from when I’d last seen him.
“How are you doing in there, Hannibal?” I said. “You wanted to see me?”
Jacob gave a tight smile and walked over to what passed for a kitchen sink, filling a kettle, plugging it in, and switching it on.
“Always the joker, Lucas,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I would like a cup of tea before we begin.
“What, no fava beans with a nice Chianti?” I said with a smirk.
Ravi stifled a laugh.
I sat down in one of the comfortable seats, with Ravi taking the seat beside me and Dr. Striker remaining by the electronics table.
“Dr. Striker, our agreement, please,” Jacob said.
I looked over at Dr. Striker, who was staring at me. He nodded once and pushed a button on the far wall. The foot-thick, bulletproof glass partition between us slid down into the ground.
“Ah,” Jacob said. “Thank you, Doctor.”
I stayed put. “We could have just spoken with that there if you were concerned I’d hurt him,” I said to Dr. Striker.
“Jacob refused to speak to anyone unless he had several demands met,” Ravi said. “No partition. Speaks only when you’re here. And a kettle with tea and milk delivered regularly.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“He also asked for an internet connection, but funnily enough, we vetoed that,” Ravi said.
The kettle finished boiling and Jacob calmly made himself a cup of tea, adding milk and sugar to the hot water and stirring it slowly without looking back at us.
“Jacob,” Dr. Striker said, an almost-plea in his voice. “We really do need to begin.”
Jacob let out a deep breath, turned back to us, and, cup in hand, walked out of his cell, moved the chair beside mine so that it was facing me, and sat down.
“I wish you to know that should anything occur here that jeopardises either party, I will hit the panic button,” Dr. Striker said, pointing to a red button on the wall beside him.
I got up, moving my own chair so that it was facing Jacob, and retook my seat. “Could have saved us a lot of time and effort if we didn’t have to do the theatrics,” I told him as Ravi pushed his chair back. Far enough away to not be involved in the conversation, but close enough that he could stop me from murdering Jacob. Well, technically, he couldn’t stop me if he tried, but I liked Ravi, so I wasn’t going to do anything stupid.
“Lucas Rurik,” Jacob said, before blowing on his hot cup of tea. “It’s been a while. My beard isn’t quite as full as your own, but it’s getting there.”
“I’d be glad to share grooming tips,” I told him. “If it helps, the prison jumpsuit really looks good on you. The colour is great for your skin.”
Jacob laughed. “I imagine you have many questions. Most of which I refused to answer without you being here. Do you know why?”
“Because you’re a self-aggrandising dipshit?” I suggested with a shrug.
Jacob’s smile didn’t reach his eyes, where only hate lived.
In contrast, my smile beamed.
“We want details on where Callie Mitchell is,” Ravi said. “We also want information on your work while you were a Member of Parliament, and every single other member who was aware of your status and did nothing.”
“The Prime Minister,” Jacob said first.
“We know about him,” Ravi said. “He’s currently under criminal investigation.”
“He’s a moron,” Jacob snapped. “He used my ill-gotten funds to prop up his electoral campaign; he used my knowledge and contacts to help push through legislation. In short, he was only made Prime Minster because I couldn’t be seen to have any higher profile than I did. I helped him, and he pushed through the legislation I needed. I gave you all of the intel about the Prime Minister.”
“And it’ll take a long time to go through,” Ravi said. “There’s a lot of detailed notes and journals.”
“I liked notes,” Jacob said. His gaze snapped around to me. “How is being famous?”
“I get better restaurant tables,” I said nonchalantly.
“Where is Dr. Callie Mitchell?” Ravi asked.
“I’ve told you a hundred times, I don’t know,” Jacob said. “She contacted me using a burner phone and pinging her IP across a million different places. I don’t know where she is, I don’t know what she’s doing, I just know that when she’s done, she’s going to change the world.”
“What does that mean?” Ravi asked.
“It means exactly how it sounds,” Jacob said. “She’s going to change the world. It’s what she does.”
“She’s a monster,” I said. “She experiments on people, fiends, on anything she can get her hands on. She’s a murderer and a torturer. She’s closer to a war criminal than an actual doctor.”
“She really got under your skin, didn’t she?” Jacob asked. “She said that you were in her charge for several days. I guess she made a good impression on you. Did she show you her experiments? Did she show you the leaps she’s made?”
“I saw a lot,” I said softly.
“You know the suit I wear right now, the one that’s designed to stop me being able to access the rift?” Jacob asked, pulling his jumpsuit collar aside to show off the dark blue second-skin suit. “Do you know how it works?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You ever worn one?” Jacob asked.
“Yes,” I told him. “Practitioners help make them. They create potions that can stop people accessing the rift; those suits are soaked in them. It’s not quite as permanent as Callie wanted me to believe when I first met her, but it lasts long enough. Were you the practitioner who helped her?”
Jacob shrugged. “What if I was? What if I helped Callie subjugate and experiment on rift-fused? You’d consider me a monster, wouldn’t you? Even though I was banished here with Callie, with the Blessed. Betrayed and banished for trying to make our lives better.”
“By murdering a whole bunch of people,” I pointed out. “I will give you that maybe your dad could have used a little murdering. He did betray you, after all.”
“My dad is the real monster here,” Jacob shouted, almost jumping up. “And you helped him.”
“Jacob, please,” Dr. Striker said, his voice soothing. “This isn’t helping.”
Jacob let out a sigh and sat down. “Fine; let’s start again, shall we?”
Riftborn Book 2: Blessed Odds – Chapter 1
With Blessed Odds coming out in only a few weeks (21st Feb) , I figured people might like to have a read of the first chapter.
WARNING: If you haven’t read The Last Raven yet, there are spoilers in chapter 1 for the end of that book.
Pre-order Links:
London in the summertime is that awful combination of torrential rain, stifling heat, and unbearable humidity. Usually one right after the other, occasionally all three at the same time. Either way, you spend half of the time feeling like you’re walking through treacle.
The sun shone through the windows of the cab as the driver weaved through early-morning traffic, and I tried my best not to be concerned about other people using the road. London roads were more Mad Max–inspired than most other parts of the country, and I’d long since given up driving in the city if I could get away with it.
“Lucas, King’s Cross station, now,” Ji-hyun had said before hanging up.
I’d called the concierge to get me a taxi, and had been dressed and out of the hotel door a few minutes later. The car had been waiting for me as I stepped outside of my hotel near St Paul’s Cathedral. Ji-hyun Han, Nadia (no last name), and I had all been staying in the same hotel, although Ji-hyun and Nadia had left earlier to meet the human detective who was helping us while we were in London.
I got into the black cab and told the driver the destination. Thankfully, there was no conversation, and it meant I could sit back and continue to wake up. I’d been mid-breakfast when the phone call had stopped me from finishing a second cup of coffee.
The possibilities of why Ji-hyun had sounded so urgent rattled through my brain. She wasn’t hurt; I was sure of that. She and Nadia were more than able to take care of themselves. It was probably to do with why we were in London, still searching for those blasted vials of the super serum that Callie Mitchell had sent to buyers several months earlier. Dozens of vials of lethal gene-mutating serum sent all around the world. We’d only found nine. The odds weren’t exactly in our favour that we’d find the rest before any more of them were used to transform whoever took them into a monster.
Six months earlier, I’d killed Mason—a spoilt, rich brat with delusions of grandeur—and Callie had gone to ground; half a dozen people had used the vial they’d received. They’d all been criminals of various levels and had all been about as pleasant to deal with as having sandpaper rubbed over your genitals. They’d also all died horribly, either because their body hadn’t taken well to the drug they’d taken, and they’d essentially melted, or because some rift-fused were there to put them down. But either way, they hadn’t been stopped before they’d killed people. Callie had innocent blood on her hands, and she was going to eventually pay for that. But first things first: find the rest of the damn poison.
Ji-hyun had been asked to take over the investigation on behalf of the Rift-Crime Unit, primarily because most of the New York branch where Callie had been were either dead, working for the bad guys, or both. I got the feeling that Ji-hyun accepted more out of a need to punch Callie—and anyone working with her—in the face than anything else.
Our investigations had revealed that a man calling himself the Croupier—for reasons I’m sure he thought were incredibly clever—had arranged the meeting between Callie and her buyers. Callie had escaped while I’d killed her underling and was … who knew where. That left one thread to tug on.
A cyclist took their life into their own hands and cut up the cab, prompting the taxi driver to throw some good old British curse words at the offending rider, who stopped and stuck his middle finger up before continuing on.
“Fuckin’ cyclists,” the taxi driver said in an east London accent. He was white with a bald head and a few days’ worth of stubble. On the back of his left forearm was a tattooed badge of a military unit, although I couldn’t have said which one.
I gave a noncommittal grunt; I was just glad no one got hurt. Cyclists in London are part daredevil and part insane-asylum escapee, the degrees of each part dependent on the day and weather conditions. The hotter it got, the less inclined anyone was to be nice to one another.
“You from London?” the driver asked.
“No,” I said, steeling myself for the inevitable conversation. “Was born up north, but I spent a lot of time in the city. At some point, my accent sort of merged into one that doesn’t sound like I’m from anywhere.”
“You’re from Yorkshire?” the driver asked with no hostility or mocking in his tone, just a genuine level of curiosity.
“Not exactly,” I said, not wanting to get into the whole thing about being born when Yorkshire was just a collection of tribes. The world knew about riftborn and revenants, about how they were created, about our exceptionally long lives, but that didn’t mean they were always welcome. Their knowledge of us as a species was relatively new, and fear was still a big part of their reaction to us.
“It’s a bit of an everywhere accent, isn’t it?” he said.
I nodded. “It’s what happens when you move around a lot,” I told him. “You from around here, then?”
“Hackney,” he said. “Hence the Hammers badge. You a supporter?”
“No,” I admitted. “Moved around so much that I never really settled on a team. Always enjoyed going to watch a game, though. Well, most of the time.”
“Yeah, not every game can be a blinder,” he said with a chuckle. “I take my nippers to them, though. Good time to spend with the kids, and it gives the wife some time off.” He laughed at that one.
“She not a fan?”
“She’s a fuckin’ Man City fan,” he said with slight disgust in his voice.
“Must be fun in the house when they play each other,” I said with a smile.
“It’s hell, mate,” he said. “They battered us last time and she didn’t let me forget it for weeks. She made me fish and chips that night and spelt out 4–0 on the plate.”
I laughed at that.
“It were fuckin’ quality, if I’m honest,” he said with a laugh of his own. “Hopefully, one day I can repay the favour.”
The cab stopped, and I paid, leaving the driver a nice tip for his morning trouble. “Best of luck at the next game,” I said.
“Thanks, have a good day, mate,” he said, driving off.
I turned around to find Ji-hyun staring at me. Judging by the expression on her face, it was not going to be a good day.
Ji-hyun Han was little over five and a half feet tall, with long brown hair that was, as usual, scooped back into a high ponytail. She wore black boots, jeans, a red T-shirt with a Starfleet badge from Star Trek on the left breast. Unlike most redshirts, there was a hundred percent chance that she’d make it back from an away mission.
“What happened?” I ask, looking around for Nadia and feeling concern in my gut.
“Nadia is fine,” Ji-hyun said, as if sensing my thoughts. “She’s gone with Ravi.”
“Okay, so, what was the urgency in getting me here?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
“You remember our inside man who has been feeding us information?” she asked.
“Simon Wallace?” I asked. Ex-paratrooper, current criminal, and all round semi-bad guy. He drew the line at innocent people dying because someone turned into a monster and went on a rampage. I actually liked the guy: he was completely honest about what he was and why he did it, and that was always better than people who made excuses because they couldn’t outright deal with their life choices.
“That’s the one,” Ji-hyun said as I followed her across the wide-open space in front of King’s Cross train station. “Well, Simon just called and informed us that the Croupier and his people are boarding a train from King’s Cross to Edinburgh in an hour and ten minutes.”
“That’s going to be a very busy train,” I said, thinking with concern at what might happen on a speeding train that was packed with commuters, if the Croupier found themselves threatened.
“It’s going to be empty,” Ji-hyun said with a smile as she stopped and turned to me. “Mostly empty.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s not a normal commuter train; it’s a rich-person train.”
“Is that really a thing?” I asked as she turned and began walking again.
“Sort of,” Ji-hyun said. “We’ll go see Ravi and he’ll explain.”
I wordlessly followed Ji-hyun up a nearby street, where she indicated two unmarked police cars. Looks like Ravi had bought backup.
We arrived at the hotel, the name of which I didn’t catch or care about, and stepped through a set of automatic double doors into a large, spacious lobby. A rock feature sat in the centre of the large room, in front of three elevators. Lights shone from the base of the feature, illuminating the lower half of the fifty-foot-tall sculpture in a slowly shifting rainbow of colours.
The right of the foyer lead to a restaurant that proudly declared itself to have the best steak in town, which I doubted. The restaurant was empty. The right side of the foyer was the check-in, and there were currently half a dozen people queued there.
“You got the medallion on?” Ji-hyun asked.
I fished my Guild badge—a copper-coloured buckler shield made out of hardened stone with silver sword and hammer crossing over it, and a small black raven atop it as if holding the shield—out from under my dark blue plain T-shirt so it was visible to everyone. The badge of the Raven Guild. I was the only member left after everyone else had been murdered, but it still afforded me the same privileges as when the Guild had been full. Every law enforcement agency in the world knew what a Guild badge meant: give me access and keep your mouth shut. Not every member of law enforcement was happy about it.
Two plain-clothed officers, obvious to anyone who’d worked with their type before, stood in front of the elevator: a man and woman, just talking to each other as if they weren’t there for any particular reason. Both looked over at me and stepped aside when they saw us, passing me a key card.
“For the room,” the female officer said.
I thanked them as Ji-hyun pushed the button for the elevator, and the four of us waited in uncomfortable silence. Law enforcement might know what the medallion meant, but that didn’t mean they had to like it. There had been members of Guilds in the past who had used that power in unethical ways, and stories grew about how Guilds were a law unto themselves. How we didn’t care about human laws. Half the time, we were so busy trying to ensure that either humans didn’t kill revenants or vice versa that human laws just became a bureaucratic over-complication.
The elevator eventually arrived, and Ji-hyun and I stepped inside, giving me a moment of relief.
“Police aren’t happy we’re here?” I asked.
“Don’t care,” Ji-hyun said with a shrug. “Their boss is okay with it and that’s all I care about.”
“You left Nadia with Ravi?” I asked.
“She likes him,” Ji-hyun said with a sigh, as the elevator door opened, and we both stepped out into a small, windowed foyer with glass and dark-wood doors on either side. I spotted a card reader on the door leading to the rooms. You had to be a guest—or at least have a working card—to get through it.
I scanned the card over the door, and Ji-hyun pulled it open before I could, holding it for me as I stepped through.
“Ta very much,” I said with a smile.
“Don’t get used to it,” Ji-hyun said with a smile of her own.
I followed her the short distance to a hotel room, where she knocked twice and the door opened, revealing Agent Ravi Gill.
Ravi was just over six feet tall with brown skin and a slight Cockney accent. He wore a dark grey suit that I wasn’t convinced was standard issue. He’d been our point of call when we’d arrived in London to investigate the missing vials. He worked for the RCU, but due to underfunding and how a lot of people still didn’t trust those who had died and returned, the RCU in the UK was only recently given its own autonomy. Before then, it had been merged with an MI5 unit, meaning some of the RCU members were human. It also meant you had to be really good at your job. Humans tended to be a bit squishy, especially when it came to having a revenant or fiend barrelling toward you.
Public opinion was still divided on rift-fused—those humans or animals who had died and then been powered by the rift and returned as something more. Some hailed revenants and riftborn as miracles, but others called us demons, devils, and much worse. Certain politicians play on that fear of the unknown, and the politicians in the UK were no different from those anywhere else. Find a scapegoat and make everything their fault.
Thankfully, Ravi been helpful and considerate, and had wanted to catch Callie Mitchell and anyone who had helped her a lot more than he wanted to play political bullshit with us. I liked him. But more importantly, I trusted him to do his job well.
I stepped inside the hotel room, following Ji-hyun as I took in the layout of the room: One king-sized bed, lit by small lamps on either side of it. The bed was messy, the pillows on the floor beside it, the white cotton duvet cover strewn in the corner. The end of the bed had a metal footboard that Nadia was perched on. She was, as always, barefoot, and her chains were wrapped around her, like a comfort blanket.
Apart from the bed, the room had a wooden desk with coffee machine and phone on it. The curtains were open, and light flooded into the room. The room’s key card was inserted into the card reader next to the door. The bathroom door was ajar, light spilling out over the dark purple carpet. There were pieces of artwork on the walls of the room and a small HDTV up on the wall opposite the bed.
“Been productive?” I asked Nadia.
Nadia was five feet tall, with short dark hair and olive skin. She wore faded blue jeans and a bright yellow T-shirt. She allowed herself to fall back onto the bed and lay there like she was making a snow-angel in the bed covers.
“She okay?” Ravi asked.
“Define okay,” Ji-hyun replied.
Nadia let out a slight giggle.
“She’s fine,” I said. “Nadia, are you fine?”
“Dandy,” she said, giving a thumbs-up.
“She’s probably seeing a new timeline,” I said. “Chained revenants can see multiple threads of their own future. Sometimes, those threads are … strange and cause momentary lapses of …” I gestured to Nadia, who was now bouncing gently on the bed. ‘Well … this …” I said.
Ravi looked over at Nadia and smiled. “Fair enough,” he said, looking back at me. “Sorry to get you up early.”
“No bother,” I told him. “Ji-hyun said you have a rich person’s train and a target.”
“Every morning at exactly ten a.m., a train leaves King’s Cross and doesn’t stop until it reaches Edinburgh,” Ravi explained. “It then comes back. Every. Single. Day. It’s used by a very select group of people, who I believe are involved with the Croupier. It’s where deals are done.”
“And who arranged this exclusive train?” I asked.
“I’m looking into that right now,” Ravi said. “It went through a committee with the government, but so does a lot of stuff.”
“So, some MPs might be involved?” Ji-hyun asked.
“I can neither confirm nor deny that we are currently looking into several sitting members of Parliament,” Ravi said as if reading it off a teleprompter.
“You’ve said that before,” I said.
“It could just be a coincidence,” Ravi said.
“I don’t like coincidences,” Ji-hyun said.
“I don’t like beetroot,” Nadia said, from where she lay on the bed. “You forget you’ve eaten it, and then you go pee, and bam, you see pink pee and freak out.”
Everyone turned to stare at Nadia before pretending like that part of the conversation hadn’t happened.
“So, are we sure that this Croupier is on board the train?” Ji-hyun asked.
“No, but Simon says his allies will be,” Ravi said. “They could be a source of great information.”
“So, why not just stop the train in King’s Cross before it leaves?” I asked.
“Because if they don’t go quietly, we’ve got a rift-fused battle in the middle of one of London’s busiest train stations. Innocent people would be hurt. I don’t think any of us want that.”
“So, we need to get on the train and stop it once it’s some distance from a populated area,” I said.
“That’s the plan,” Ravi agreed.
“Okay, so, how do we get on?” I asked.
“I assume you’ll figure a way,” Ravi said.
“How do you guys get on?” Ji-hyun asked.
“You’ll have to stop the train, and we’ll be there when it’s done,” Ravi said.
“Let me get this right,” I said, leaning up against the edge of the bed. “You want us to board a train with potentially dangerous people on board, stop them, stop the train, and somehow do this safely?”
“Can I fight on the roof?” Nadia asked sitting up. “I’ve never fought on the roof of a train before.”
“You do realise that fighting on the roof of a train would be near impossible,” Ji-hyun asked.
Nadia waved her arms. “I died. I was reborn. I have chains coming out of me. I can see multiple futures. Which part of fighting on a train is harder than all of those?”
“Everyone has a dream,” Ravi said.
“Yes,” Nadia almost shouted. “See, Ravi believes in me.”
“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Ravi started.
“No need to backtrack,” Nadia said, getting to her feet and hugging a clearly confused Ravi. “You believe in me, and that’s all that matters.”
“Yes, Ravi,” I said with a smile. “All Nadia needs is the belief that she can fight on a train roof. Physics be damned.”
Nadia clapped. “I’m going to mentally prepare myself.” She left the room a moment later, and everyone exchanged a bemused look.
“Are all chained revenants like her?” Ravi asked.
“No,” Ji-hyun said. “Some are completely insane.”
“Or murderous,” I added.
“Or just psychotic,” Ji-hyun continued.
“Or all three,” I said.
“Those are the fun ones,” Ji-hyun said, pointing at me as if I’d said something perfect.
“Can you do this?” Ravi asked, his voice now serious.
“Of course,” Ji-hyun said. “I’ll go find Nadia and make sure she’s not trying to learn how to fly or something.”
“No bravado,” Ravi said when we were alone. “Our informant got us this information.”
“Is Simon still safe?” I asked.
“He’s being monitored for now,” Ravi said. “There’s nothing linking him to anything we’re about to do, but we’re keeping an eye on him and his family, just in case. So, can you do this?”
“Ravi, we can do this,” I said. “I’m not convinced Nadia will be able to have a fight on the train roof, but the rest of it, sure. What’s the target’s name?”
“Eve Dior,” Ravi said. “We know that’s not her real name. She’s Caucasian, about five-three, maybe nine stone, we have no photos of her. No one has photos of her. Simon wouldn’t risk taking any. She terrifies him. He’s an ex-paratrooper.”
“Scary lady on a train,” I said. “We’ll deal with her. Bring her in, get you to question her, and hopefully we’ll get intel on where the rest of the blasted vials are.”
“If we can get her and get intel, we might be able to stop this before more people die,” Ravi said.
“Let’s hope so,” I told him, and left the hotel room, feeling like neither Ravi nor myself believed that.
Riftborn Book 1: The Last Raven Book Launch
I have a new book out today. It’s on kindle, paperback, and audible. Go read and (hopefully) enjoy.
Order Links:
Steve McHugh 