Havok Publishing

Archive - September 2022

Mistakes Happen

Sam snatched the steaming paper cup of black coffee off the counter. His palm crawled at the heat from the cup as he stepped outside. He set the coffee down carefully on the wrought-iron tabletop where legal pads and heavy historical tomes teetered in unstable stacks.
The barista was a loser.
The shop had

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Gray

I stumbled, snotty and blurry-eyed, from the smoking building. I didn’t look heroic, but I had rescued the missing child. That’s what mattered. Especially since wailing firetrucks were only beginning to pierce the surrounding commotion.
Blinking back tears, I cradled the grime-covered toddler in my arms. Her small body convulsed in a coughing fit.

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The Great McMillan

Herman McMillan was the best detective in the history of crime, and I was the only one who knew it.
There was that time he found a murderer hiding in the air vents of a drugstore after using his dachshund to follow the scent of the cheeseburger left in the victim’s apartment. Another time McMillan returned

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Dragons Are Not Heroes

Rule 44: Dragons are not heroes—do not act like one.
It’s one of the many rules I, Orpheus, abide by. One of 345, to be exact. Though please don’t ask me to recite them all—I simply haven’t the time. Cave dwelling involves much slumbering and polishing of scales.
But I’ll tell you a few.

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Vein Beauty

Rumors said she went mad for beauty.
And while Briar’s search had begun with a desperate desire to keep the fairy-given beauty… it had evolved into so much more.
She hadn’t gone mad for beauty.
She’d transcended it.
A red horizon lit the battlefield and illuminated the corpses of those who had tried to

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Super Gus, Do You Copy

The glass roof of the museum’s atrium shatters, and I duck behind a pillar. Twenty-three rotund robots rappel through the jagged opening on extensible steel arms. Riding atop the center bot is a short, pudgy man in a purple-and-green-striped lab coat. Frizzy orange curls encircle his bald scalp like clouds around a shiny mountaintop.

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Proofreader

Typos are proof of humanity.
The Typo Alliance slogan fills my mind as I park and slip a file from my purse. I tap my glasses twice, activating the scanner to illuminate data.
TYPO: NEW ECLECTIC GRID POWERS LOCAL WAREHOUSE
ASSIGNED: AGENT BRODY HIGGINS
CONCLUSION: NO FOLLOW-UP REQUIRED
I snap the file shut. Brody might

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The Betrayal

Jon ducked into Mrs. Winslow’s English class just before the bell. The red paint had been scrubbed from the door, leaving behind just a few stubborn smudges. Jon willed himself not to look, but he couldn’t avoid a glance or two. It wasn’t every day that a guy committed the perfect crime.

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All That Glitters

Never make a deal with a fae lord.
The old adage ran through my head as I approached the house of Lord Faron Beaugard—High Lord of the Forest Realm. The glamor—a façade—of the house rolled toward me in unending waves, but I wasn’t foolish enough to be sucked in. I scanned the sprawling mansion,

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The Good, the Bad, and the Cliché

With a Glock 17 aimed between her eyes, Judy Suarez lit a cigarette and grinned. “Aren’t you going to ask if I’m feeling lucky?”
I stood to the side, helpless, as Chelsea gripped the handgun with firmer resolve, her attention fully trained on my employer. “Shut up! For once, let me think.”
Situated in Judy’s

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