Everyone knows how the stories go.
The princess imprisoned by a dragon. Then the knight comes and fights the dragon with his mighty lance and rescues the lady.
It’s a good story to tell around the hearth on a winter’s night.
There’s only one trouble with it, and I see that now:
Red belongs to the Strongman. It’s the color of passion and rage, of birth and death—things he alone controls—and to wear it outside his city is to beckon the bloodwatchers’ blades.
Yet my sister and I pass through a field
“It isn’t finished. It isn’t finished,” the girl mumbled almost hysterically. The glow of her eyes reflected on the screen. Red irises focusing intensely on the device.
“Scarlata,” a male voice sounded behind her.
She remained fixed on her task.
“There’s nothing you
The numbers appeared after Tara’s tenth birthday. Always red. Never another color. Bright as warning lights. They were hovering above her father’s head while he buttered toast.
32
They flashed like a reflection off glass, wavering each time he leaned toward the raspberry jam. She
My brother and I have labored since dawn under the Colorado sky, hacking away at a rock face in a luckless search for silver. Growing numbers of werewolves back East have made that metal more precious than gold. Frustrated, we eat a meager
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“How do we shut it off?” I shout over the dissonant symphony created by Dr. Prismatic’s haywire machine. Thankfully, at the entrance of the hastily abandoned carnival, we’re just beyond the whirlwind’s reach.
“It was only supposed to affect the carnival—I never
Anticipation pulses through Anya as she hears the car pull up outside. She rises, making her way to the door, giggling quietly before schooling her features and opening it.
The man steps onto the porch, his aftershave hitting her nose, the scent marking his youth. “Mrs. Jansen? I’m Jed Barker. The agency sent me.”
“Ain’t afraid of heights, are ya?” Viv peered down from the top stair.
Whit shook his head, trying to catch his breath from the steep climb. The old woman wasn’t even winded.
He grabbed the handrail as Viv’s dog, Trooper, bounded
“Good morning, sir.” The smiling woman in the white lab coat held the door open. “Cubicle One, as usual.”
“Thank you.” Donald returned her smile as he limped through with his cane. I’ve wanted superpowers all my life, but this is what
A man in a suit dropped a bottle cap on my table at the back of the soda shop. I flipped it over. It had a white dot painted inside. He knew my code, which meant he was part of the underground crime system, but
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“All this trouble just so you can cuddle some alien vultures.” My sister landed our gyro-flyer near one of my video recorders, which was showing a lone adorb. Usually they were in herds of a dozen or so. “A year with
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Marjorie woke up strapped to a surgical table in an unfamiliar laboratory. One minute, she had been walking to her car alone, worried her life was going nowhere; the next, she’d fought for it as a pungent cloth covered her nose and mouth.
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