Havok Publishing

Archive - September 2023

All’s Fair in Old Japan

“Sorcha, wait!” Mr. Devereaux calls. The pompous old duck is always telling me to wait. “Feudal Japan isn’t safe for foreigners. Europeans could be killed on sight.”
“Did anyone warn my brother of that?” I yell over my shoulder.
I plunge through the dripping trees to the road beyond.

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New Atlantis: The Intergalactic Zoo

Please help me! A faint tinny voice pleaded.

“Athenis, did you hear someone?” I yelled above the buzzing alarms.

Athenis glanced up, her screen’s warning messages reflecting red on her scaly, humanoid face. “No. We’re the only ones securing this sector.” She continued nonchalantly swiping away alerts on her handheld interfacer.

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Guardian of the Kunlun Mountains

Fear constricted Tara’s throat and sent her heart racing as the plane’s turbulence intensified. Passengers gasped and objects rattled in the overhead bins.
Ironic that she would die here, thrown into the very mountain peaks she spent her entire graduate thesis studying.
“Why me?” She swallowed as more turbulence rocked her.

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The King Under the Mountain

We need help. Because—to put it frankly—the world has gone to crap, and we need a hero to save us. That’s why I went searching for that forgotten island, somewhere between the Old World and the New—Avalon. On this island I would find a mountain, and the king sleeping beneath it.

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The Fountain of Youth

Peter chose a table in the back of the tavern, giving himself a wide view of the entrances. He ordered a drink and instinctively scanned the room. He noted a frail old man watching him across the way. He avoided eye contact, but the man continued to watch him. Was he being followed?

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Dead Men Tell No Tales

“The wax man’s face is melting off!” Another one for the list of weird things that I say with surprising regularity.
“Melting how?” James Prothero asks.
I scowl at him over my shoulder. “How many ways can I mean melting?”
“Are we talking Wicked Witch of the West or Ark of the Covenant?”

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The Green Goddess

“They’re going to cut your funding, Jakk.”
The words slammed into me, but I continued adjusting the excavation bot’s parameters, pretending I hadn’t heard. When I finished, I watched the bot whir into the air, hovering above our floating platform before zipping to the jungle to join its companions at the archaeological site below.

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Poll Whitecap

In honor of my first Crossing the Line—or equator, as landlubbers call it—I bought a parrot. Scarlet she was, with a tuft of white atop her head, which I smoothed down, saying, “I’ll call you Poll Whitecap,” thinking of the foam-topped waves.
“Can’t believe you paid so much for…

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Borrowing Time

Peter had thought dying would be an awfully big adventure.
But not like this. Not when he wasn’t the one staring it in the eye.
He couldn’t let Jane face death without him, because he couldn’t face life without her.
He watched her chest rise and fall, her breathing labored and ragged.

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