He had no thoughts, no feelings, only the raging instinct for survival. He aimed the shotgun without a plan, and the blast exploded into the dragon’s chest at the base of the neck with fiery sparks, the shock rippling through the scales the length of its body with flashes of emerald and ruby. The...
Nate Springfield read aloud, smiling at the strange similarity his daughter's characters bore to a real family—theirs. He looked up from the manuscript. “Norton?” His sixteen-year-old daughter, Elisha, blond and pretty, grinned sheepishly across the dining table. “Well . . .” “I mean, your mother...
They mixed in some of their own clothes and some they’d bought at the local Goodwill, along with any books, handbags, backpacks, and personal items they could scrounge from the local grade school. Then they brought in Mr. Maxwell to play his favorite game: tracking down a scent in exchange for a ...
“It’s all Yours,” he said. And then he shoved the throttle forward. “Let’s land it!” he yelled. Only a few feet off the water, The Yank roared to life, nosed up, and climbed like a homesick angel. Brock shoved his throttle forward and climbed after The Yank as he gave Dr. Cooper a troubled, bewil...
Fade up. Illuminated by a single, hard light source to the left of screen, white hair backlit to create a corona around his head, the bearded, sagelike face of Preston Gabriel turned toward the camera. In a low, rumbling voice reminiscent of Orson Welles, he spoke. “Psychokinesis, the claimed pow...
Peretti All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written ...
The rifle was cold and heavy. Dew formed on the barrel, and his hands complained, threatening to cramp. He held the rifle in one hand while he flexed the other, then traded hands and flexed again. The woods were alive; the night shift was on duty. Leopard frogs in the nearby streambed called each...
Macon that there would be phone calls and knocks at the door, and his prophetic gifts were right on the money. Ever since that Wednesday afternoon tea, visitors were coming up the long driveway to see the prophet, the Messiah, Jesus, the man claiming to be Jesus, the Avatar of Christ, or anything...
Everything matched. The Brewers lived toward the south end of The City in a predominantly black neighborhood, a low-income area where the houses and yards were small and clusters of kids played on concrete and asphalt more often than on grass; where both sides of the street were lined with aging,...
Her predicament had become completely . . . There was no word to describe how bad her situation was. Death, maybe. She was actually dying. Or had died and was now in hell. The hell the priests of her childhood had warned her about. She couldn’t think straight. It was dark; she only had to open he...
Up until now, I’ve been writing mostly from the perspective of the victim, which puts me in a safe place. I can be the sweet, innocent hero of the story, while all the other characters are the bad guys. Well, it was nice while it lasted, but in real life there is always another side to the story....
They had to step around piles of old boards and crumbling rubble where houses, stores, saloons, and other businesses once stood. At times, the sagebrush and cacti allowing, they could even see where the main street and some of the backroads used to be. It didn’t take long for Jay and Lila to appr...
Peretti All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written ...