The floorboards of the psychiatric facility creaked beneath my feet as I followed Dr. Kelvin down the hall. All the other residents either stared at me or looked through me like I wasn’t there. I wasn’t sure which was creepier.
“Does she still
“Oh, ho! What have we here? Off to war, squirrel?” King Oswain chuckled. The monarch, clad in a purple velvet tunic, elaborately embroidered breeches, and boots of the finest leather, slowed his stallion to a walk on the sunlight-dappled forest path. As he circled
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Queen Majorie’s coronation ball had been meticulously planned, down to the minute. Except for the kidnapping.
Marjorie was sprawled in the middle of the ballroom floor, her sapphire blue coronation gown puddled around her. The rest of her guests sat around the perimeter, held in place by the threat of circling black-cloaked figures.
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Sara centers the crosshairs on the blonde’s skull. The unsuspecting woman wearing a blue sundress drinks from a teacup, her face shadowed by the café table’s umbrella.
A hundred yards away, hunkered atop the roof of an abandoned warehouse, Sara finesses the scope’s elevation and windage with a smooth efficiency earned by months of practice. Below, the city produces an occasional pedestrian and passing vehicle while the empty boulevard remains trapped in the simmering quiet before the morning rush. Within the next five minutes, a train will roar past on a bridge overlooking the café, masking the rifle’s echoing boom. Sara will disassemble her weapon and flee the scene before the train’s ambiance decays across the unsuspecting neighborhood.
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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
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