Things were turning into a shit sandwich and any minute I’d be forced to take a great big, heaping bite of it, little bits of corn and all. I could taste it already. I had no clue who masked boy was trying to break out of the interstice but the fact that he was willing to ...
Katon called out, rallying the troops, so to speak.Chatterbox’s answer was to hum the chorus to Dark Angel’s “Death is Certain (Life is Not).” It made me grateful I was the only real metalhead among the group so no one caught the reference since he didn’t actually sing the words. Even Katon, who ...
Insects chirped in the distance, their noises mingling with the sounds of bells ringing in his skull. As his vision began to clear, he moved to get up. Pain rattled his frame, a snowstorm of flickering lights nearly blinding him once more. He bit back a groan and used a tree to leverage himself i...
I asked once I was sure I could talk without squeaking. “I’m beginning to think you hate me.” “Hate?” Scarlett shook her head. “Hate is such a strong word, Frank. I could never hate you; we’re family, after all, right?” I chuckled imagining all the things she could think of me, knowing not very m...
The celebration outside the walls continued but had begun to taper off. Ellora understood the cold reality of what the people of Lathah were now realizing. Their homes and shops were in shambles, and rubble and bodies lined the streets from the Ninth to the Crown. None had escaped the ruin that h...
And as it had been every other night, my prayers went unanswered. My knees were stiff from kneeling upon the cold tiles, so I rose to my feet with an empty sigh, hearing others of my brethren doing the same around me. The flickers of God’s essence, which clung to the Kingdom, were more a vexation...
He’d stared at the photos of the young girl’s torso for hours, comparing it to the first two Bane victims. It was clear that the first two kills had been random, no pattern or organization to the wounds. The girl was different. For all the damage, there was some vague something that s...
Though she longed to rejoice, she buried her hope deep inside for she knew death still clutched tight to her cloak. Lashed to a chunk of wreckage from her sunken ship to keep her from being tossed into the boiling water that whipped around her, Braelyn fought to get to her knees as land approache...
Cyrill pulled out what passed for a hoodie in her world and gave it to me to wear. It was yet another stinky whiff of how different and yet how much the same things were no matter what part of the universe you came from. It hung down to my knees and I nearly swam in the thing, but at least it mad...
Given the time, he was surprised not to see either of her parent’s vehicles in the driveway. They both should have been there. The bad feeling he’d managed to convince himself was nothing on the way to the house suddenly returned. Daring the front door, he rang the bell. H...
He complained the entire time. “Leave me be, damn it. I am not some child who needs to be coddled.” “Maybe not, buddy, but you’re gonna need a service dog and a pair of Stevie Wonder glasses for a while.” As if to prove my po...
Susan leaned closer to the toughened glass, splayed fingers creating mist coronas around the tips. The darkness was absolute but she knew it was still out there. Her nose bumped against the glass at the same time she saw its movements. The shadow was gargantuan—yet the bioluminescent light flicke...
I ran through the corridors of Lucifer’s chambers and down into the fiend room. Barely able to breathe, I pointed at the wall where Poe had magicked his way into the hidden chambers and set the dread fiends loose on it. I didn’t have time to figure out how to open the door, but I sure as shit cou...
She might not be good with plotting urban warfare, but I knew it’d take an army to pry those two out from under her thumb; especially after I’d made her promise.Being a succubus, Veronica was pretty much a slave to power. She and I had butted heads when we were married, but there hadn’t been enou...