Flash Fiction: Fire Escape in Davu Ten

I accepted the Flash Fiction challenge, but I have to warn you -- it's not flash fiction. I never CAN end these things! Though it has a sort of conclusion... Can you spot the words we were given? I think I used them all.

****

I had to be hallucinating. The orange cat that habitually sunned on my twentieth-floor fire escape in the late afternoon was missing, but in its place was a naked guy.

My finger poised over the 9 button on my cellphone, though it would be a miracle if I got a timely response to an emergency call in this neighborhood, and that was when cell service was functional, which it might not be. We protected ourselves in Diyu Ten, as much as we could afford to. We all did things we weren’t proud of, but we were alive, right?

Could the guy on my fire escape say the same? Was he alive?

He was big, but he wasn’t moving. Silent as the cat I wasn’t, I very carefully bent the old vinyl blind so I could see more, see if he was a threat.

If he was a cat shifter, I’d be fine. I’d been polite to the orange cat, fed and praised it, not knowing if he was yokai or animal.

If he was a different kind of shifter, maybe a cobra shifter—or, worse, a pure phantom yokai in temporary corporeal form—I was in deep shit.

Only the cats were safe. Everyone knew that. But you couldn’t tell who turned into what until they actually...turned. By then it might be too late.

Was it too late for me? Or for my unwelcome visitor?

His medium brown chest rose and fell with his breathing, but his eyelids didn’t so much as flutter. I didn’t see any wounds, any empty booze bottles. Didn’t see any piles of clothing, either. Damn, if he was an eagle shifter, I could get a pretty penny for some of his feathers. Maybe enough to get me out of this high-rise hellhole into one of the human oases.

Then again, if he was an eagle, he might be sleeping off a meal—the orange cat. I had quite the attachment to that cat, even though I assumed he belonged to one of the building’s other residents.

Eagles were such assholes.

Cautiously, I pulled the nearest window open a half-inch. “Mister. Hey, mister? Are you okay?”

No answer.

I did not want to walk out of my magically protected apartment to deal with an unidentified shifter. He had to be a shifter, to be on a fire escape twenty stories up. Otherwise he was an acrobat, but if so, why was he slumming in Diyu Ten?

Hell beans. Why me? Why always me?

Well, I couldn’t ignore a man on my fire escape.

I shrugged into my charmed Kevlar and precious helmet and laced up my combat boots, all standard attire for venturing forth as a human into the jolly old United States on the cusp of the twenty-second century. Never leave home without the armor or my charm pendant, which never left my body. I lowered the helmet’s visor, fetched a broom, and undid the enhanced chains on the fire escape door.

Easing the steel door open an inch, knowing this was the stupidest thing I’d done all month, I slid the broom handle through the crack and poked the sleeping guy with it.

“Hey,” I said in as deep a voice as I could manage. After six months of practice, I was getting good. “Wake up.”

Still no response. Ugh! How many restore spells did I have in the medicine cabinet? Would have to be a spell—chemical medicine was far too expensive for the likes of me. Not for the first time I wished I’d studied magic instead of ecology in school. Talk about a useless career when wild magic had fritzed the entire planet from the ground up.

Taking a deep breath that was redolent—even this far up—of the alley below, I stepped onto the fire escape. The rusted metal clanged under my boots.

Before I could blink, the unconscious man leapt to his feet, tackled me into my home sweet hovel, and kicked the door shut behind us. The baohu security spell sealed itself with an audible hiss, locking us in.

“Abomination,” he growled, his breath steaming up my black tinted visor. “I have found you, and I will have my revenge.”

His revenge? His revenge for what, my affinity for coaxing Old World technology like calculators and coffee makers to work?

He ripped off my helmet. My hair flew into my face and into his mouth.

He spluttered. His weight pressed me into the shabby carpet, and his fingers wound beneath my Kevlar and around my neck.

“You are shrinking this far from the ocean, dakuwaqa,” he gloated, thonking my head against the floor. “If I had found you any sooner, you might have put up a fight.”

“I’m not who you think I am,” I managed. “Let me go.”

I scrabbled at his hands, but he only dug his fingers in deeper. He caught the leather thong of my pendant—my pendant!—and ripped it off my body.

Noooooo!

My hair—long, black, straight as quills—fell free of my face. I stared up at him. He glared down at me. “If you aren’t the shark, why are you living in his home? Using his baohu spells?”

“That’s a long story,” I said, realizing this man, despite his words of revenge, could be a vigilante. A bounty hunter. Would he be happy or angry that I’d gotten the shark first? Except I hadn’t collected the bounty, because I’d wanted everyone to think I was the shark.

That and the pendant were the only things that had been keeping me safe in Davu Ten, and now this asshole might have blown it.


*

Jody Wallace

Smart. Snarky. Seductive. And that's just the books.

http://www.jodywallace.com * http://www.meankitty.com

Flash Fiction: "Unsub" by Linda Mooney

"Unsub" 
by Linda Mooney

Words Used:
hallucinating

miracle

vigilante

revenge

phantom
acrobat

cobra

ocean

abomination

            Lt. Deea Walsh rubbed the grittiness from her tired eyes and tried to focus on the front door of the dark building where they believed their suspect was hiding out. The nearest light in the area was a distant streetlamp, which puddled its yellow glow directly beneath it. Otherwise, a one-quarter moon was the only other source.

            “Yo, Deea. Say something. I’m so tired, I’m hallucinating. I’m thinking every shadow I spot in the windows or hovering around this back door is our unsub.”

            She smiled and keyed her mic. “Do any of them wear a skirt?”

            “Skirts, bikinis, jock straps, you name it. I wouldn’t put it past this guy to put on any kind of disguise in order to slip past us. Hell, he could be anyone. It’ll be a miracle if we manage to catch him. How much longer are we gonna hafta remain here?”

            She checked her watch. “Two more hours, Dunlevy. I promise. Just hold tight.”

            “Copy that. I’m out.”

            She replaced the mic on its hook and stretched her legs to relieve the charley horse developing in her right calf. Dunlevy was right. It would be a miracle if they managed to snag this chameleon. The self-proclaimed vigilante was a master of disguise, able to move in and out of situations like a phantom. Enacting revenge on those he felt deserved punishment because he felt the law hadn’t dealt harshly enough.

            Personally, Deea couldn’t fault him. His last two victims were, what she privately considered to be, the sickest of the sick. But because they had the money and the pull, their high-paid lawyers managed to get them off with little more than a slap on the wrist, a fine, and probation because someone at the department mishandled evidence.

            But in every case where the vigilante was involved, two days later, those criminals were found dead. And, eerily enough, their deaths mirrored those of their own crimes. So far there had been six such cases in all, with no clues and no way to figure out who was responsible, until a single word was left at the third crime scene.

            Cobra.

            Then, at the fourth murder scene, another clue.

            Ocean.

            At the fifth, there had been nothing. At least, they hadn’t found anything if there had been one left behind. But at the sixth, a number and street name.

            414 Acrobat Avenue.

            It was almost too easy. SWAT stormed what turned out to be an abandoned textile mill to find no evidence whatsoever that anyone had ever been there. Captain Gammercy chose to pull back and focus their investigation on the warehouses by the docks, but Deea couldn’t shake the feeling that this was where they’d find the mysterious man. Which was why she was using her off time to stake out the location with the reluctant help of her partner, Lt. Mike Dunlevy.

            “Tell me again why you think he’s here?” Her partner’s voice broke the silence again.

            “The clues he left us,” she replied in a whisper. Was her imagination starting to play tricks on her, too? After a moment, the shadow she thought she saw at one of the doors turned out to be nothing, and she breathed easier.

            “I know that.” Dunlevy sighed wearily. “What I want to know is why you think you’ve figured it out, when every other law enforcement officer disagrees with you.”

            “The clues he left us,” she repeated. Actually, the clues were about twenty percent of her reasoning. The other eighty was pure gut instinct. “There used to be a Cobra Fabrics in this building back in the sixties. It was bought out by Oceana Industries in ’72 before it folded in ’98. Then, of course, there’s this address.” She gave a half-hearted laugh. “Maybe our perp got tired of us being unable to put two and two together, and finally decided to send us an invitation.”

            Something definitely moved, and this time she knew it wasn’t a shadow. “I think I’ve spotted him!” she tersely said and dropped the mic. She heard her partner’s reply that he was on his way to back her as she cautiously eased out the open window of her car and began advancing toward the building, her Sig Sauer held out in front of her.

            She moved slowly and as silently as possible as she tried to keep the dark form in view. Although she knew how dangerous this guy was, she felt somewhat confident he wouldn’t kill her. Harm her, most likely, but not kill her, because she wasn’t on his revenge radar.

            She got as far as the walkway leading up to the set of double doors when the figure suddenly appeared in front of her. He was so close, she felt as if he’d thrown an invisible blanket around her and was holding her in his grasp. Deea tried to breathe, when his scent filled her head. His woodsy, unusual, and peculiar scent.

            “I know you’ve been searching for me,” he whispered. His voice was unusually gentle, with its strange lilt. “I came to tell you I am done here.”

            “Of course you’re done. You’re under arrest,” she finally managed to say.

            The man smiled. He was tall, and had a rugged, almost sculpted face. Moonlight glinted off his jet black hair. He wore a dark shirt and jeans, but something about him didn’t add up. Something she couldn’t put her finger on, but would swear to on a Bible.

            “No,” he rebuked her. “I am done here…and I am taking you with me.”

            “What? No! Wait!” Where the hell was Dunlevy? Fear made her tremble as the man drew closer.

            Then, as the stranger advanced, his face changed. His eyes began to glow as his body shifted form and shape. The shirt and jeans were absorbed into his skin, and she realized they hadn’t been real.

            “What...” She gasped as he stopped less than a yard away. Naked and glorious, with an aura that made him shine from within. With a start, she knew he wasn’t human.

            “What kind of abomination are you?” Deea asked.

            “My name is Tavlos. My mother is Nemesis, goddess of retribution.”

            “Nemesis? As in Greek goddess?”

            He smiled, and his eyes lit up like the stars. “It is a long story. But, in short, there are those of us minor gods and goddesses, and our offspring, who did not choose to live their lives in the heavens. But their decision did not lessen their ancestry or their worth. When they are killed by such ruthless and shallow humans, it is my duty to bring those responsible to justice if your own courts fail to render due punishment.”

            Deea shook her head, unable to comprehend what he was telling her. “Why are you telling me this? You do realize that everything you say can and will be used in a court of law.” Her mind fluttered as she grasped at the Miranda. She couldn’t let this monster slip from between her fingers because of a technicality!

            Tavlos reached out and took her hand. Calmness washed through her. His touch soothed and comforted, and she lowered her weapon as he laced his fingers through hers.

            “Come. My work here is done. We must go.”

            “We? Go where? Why are you taking me with you?”

            “Because you are strong, and therefore worthy to join us. Come. Let me show you.”

            “No. No!” She shook her head and tried to pull away, but his gaze was mesmerizing. She was vaguely aware of her partner running around the side of the building, searching for her, but for some reason he couldn’t see them standing mere feet away.

            She turned to look at Dunlevy, but it no longer mattered. “What will happen to me where you’re taking me? Are you going to kill me?”

            Tavlos laughed softly and lifted her empty hand to kiss it. “No, I will not kill you. I plan to love you, Deea.”

            “Will we ever return?” she managed to ask as a sweet lassitude filled her.

            “Only if another one of us is victimized,” he replied.

            She nodded, and peered down once more. The last thing she saw as they ascended toward the heavens was her partner frantically searching for her as he called out her name.

Excerpt from Star Cruise: Outbreak

Sharing an excerpt from my newly released science fiction romance novel Star Cruise: Outbreak.

First here's the story: 

She saved countless soldiers in the wars … but does she have the weapons to fight an outbreak?

Dr. Emily Shane, veteran of the Sector Wars, is known as “The Angel of Fantalar” for her bravery under fire as a medic. However, the doctor has her own war wounds–severe PTSD and guilt over those she failed to save.

Persuaded to fill a seemingly frivolous berth as ship’s doctor on the huge and luxurious interstellar cruise liner Nebula Zephyr, she finds the job brings unexpected perks–a luxe beach deck with water imported from Tahumaroa II, and Security Officer Jake Dilon, a fellow veteran who heats her up like a tropical sun.

However, Emily soon learns she and Jake didn’t leave all peril behind in the war. A mysterious ailment aboard the Zephyr begins to claim victim after victim … and they must race against time and space to find the cause and a cure! Trapped on a ship no spaceport will allow to dock, their efforts are complicated by a temperamental princess and a terrorist–one who won’t hesitate to take down any being in the way of his target.  If anyone’s left when the disease is through with them.

A little set up for the excerpt: The ship is besieged with what Emily believes to be a simple norovirus, like the ones that attack cruise ships in our time. She's gone to talk to the Nebula Zephyr's chef about necessary precautions:

          Chef Stephanie wasn’t at all what Emily had expected. The person in charge of food on the Nebula Zephyr was a tiny, slender woman with a cascade of unruly red curls tied back with a thick apple-green band and topped with the traditional chef’s hat. She wore an apron with “Boss” in purple glitter crystals across the bib. Her hands were typical cook’s hands, even in the modern era, with the scars from tiny cuts, the silver of an old burn mark and a thick callus at the base of her forefinger. Her grasp during the obligatory handshake was firm.

            She eyed Emily up and down, green eyes narrowed. “You wish to lay the blame for the sick passengers at my feet? You think my food causes this problem?”

            “Not at all. We’ll probably never know exactly what sickened them, and this doesn’t appear to be food poisoning. Much more likely to be something about how the meals are served. Maybe a buffet chafing dish not kept hot enough or food left out too long. Or someone not being diligent enough about handwashing.” The captain’s warning about treating Stephanie with kid gloves fresh in her mind, Emily attempted to be conciliatory. Unfortunately, her remarks appeared to inflame the man standing behind the chef.

            Short, rotund and impeccably dressed in a uniform with creases like knives, he was all bluster. “My staff is fully trained and certified, highly professional. None of my people would ever commit a lapse in safety standards.”

            “Dr. Shane, may I introduce Blake Radfor, the Zephyr’s maître d’?” Jake inserted himself into the conversation. “He’s got twenty years of service on some of the premier cruise lines under his belt.”

            “Your staff members are human, and humans have momentary lapses, make mistakes,” Emily said as she shook hands. Radfor snatched his hand away even before the polite gesture was concluded. Keeping her temper, Emily continued. “Maeve is reviewing the records for the robo servers and autopreparers right now, so we’re covering all the possibilities.”

            “Come into my office.” Stephanie cast a glance around the bustling kitchen. “We’re in the middle of lunch preparations, but I can be spared for a few moments.” She paused three times on the way to her office, however, to taste a sauce, to correct the way a sous chef was slicing vegetables and to adjust the flame on an old-fashioned range in the far corner where meat was searing. Emily bit her tongue and curbed her impatience.

            The office was tiny, but the four of them managed to squeeze inside so the portal could close. Stephanie sat at the desk, Blake standing at her shoulder like a bodyguard. She picked up a wicked paring knife and began balancing it on the desk, tip down, holding her palm over the carved butt of the handle. “What do you need to know, Doctor?”

            Is she trying to intimidate me now? Good luck, lady. I’ve been pursued by the Mawreg, so I’m not about to be cowed by a human with a sharp object. “Did we buy any local produce at the last stop that might have carried bacteria on board? Even though the symptoms don’t appear to be food poisoning, I want to eliminate as many potential problems as I can.”

            Head tilted, the chef said, “But yes, I took the opportunity to explore the market and enhance the menu with special vegetables from your planet."

Buy Links: Amazon     Kobo   Barnes & Noble  

Open Ended vs Closed Series

I have two different series on the go right now. Amid Wind & Stone, book two in my YA fantasy series Otherselves just released in March. Golden Eyes, book four in Violet Eyes came out in late January.

One series is fantasy, one is science fiction, but the biggest different between them to me is that one series is closed and the other is open-ended.

Otherselves has always had a specific three-book structure, with individual stories set within an over-arching story. What do I mean by that? Book one, Through Fire & Sea, tells the story of Leah and Holly who are otherselves from Fire World and Water World respectively. Book two, deals with two more otherselves of the same girls, Dorotea and Audrey, who are from Stone and Air Worlds. Leah also makes an appearance in book two, determined to set right something that went wrong in book one. Book three (forthcoming) will tell the story of their last otherself, Belinda, from the True World, and get back to Leah, who will finally get her Happily Ever After. The books share a common antagonist. I always knew the series would be a trilogy and would end once I told the story of each otherself.

 

On the other end my YA science fiction series is completely open-ended. To be truthful, I never actually intended to write a series at all. I wrote book one, Violet Eyes, as a stand-alone. It was my publisher, Pocket Books, who asked for a sequel—and insisted it be about Mike and Angel, not a spin-off. Thus I wrote Silver Eyes, again with no overarching plot in mind, but merely a what-happened-to-them-next plot.

  

Years later, at the request of fans, I resumed writing the series and self-published first Angel Eyes and now Golden Eyes. Angel Eyes, again, mostly stands on its own. The ending of Golden Eyes, however, is definitely hinting at the next adventure. I will write at least one more Mike and Angel book—but I still don’t have an over-arching plot in mind.

After that? Who knows? It will depend on my career, sales of book four, and if I get another idea.

 

The two series have a very different feel writing-wise.

Writing the Otherselves trilogy with a series of set deadlines has felt rather like running a marathon. I love the stories, but at the same time I am so happy that the end is in sight!

In contrast, sitting down to write about Mike and Angel, two beloved characters I created years ago, feels easy and relaxing, like catching up with friends you haven’t seen for awhile.

Clothes Make the Man

I dream of valiant knights, strong women, flowing gowns and romantic castles. I’m not a fan of women as victims but rather women that are self-sufficient, mentally strong and resourceful. My heroes are self-confident men who are intelligent with ripped abs and commanding auras. These two alpha characters must work together as a team to meet their challenges and find love.

But this blog is about clothes. When I researched 17^th century clothes for my Druid Knight, Lord Arik I was surprised to find that men wore high heels long before women.

Sometime around the ninth century, Persian horseback warriors appear to be the first high heel wearers. The longer heel was specifically created to help keep the rider’s foot in the stirrup and prevent it from slipping. The high heels helped the rider steady themselves when standing in the stirrups and shooting arrows.

When a group of Persian diplomats visited Europe in the late 1500’s to recruit allies to help defeat the Ottoman Empire, the craze for Persian culture exploded and with it the Western European aristocrat desire for the Persian-style high heeled shoes. The shoes quickly became a status symbol and the heels heightened to make men look taller.

In the 1600s Louis XIV of France was an intense shoe collector and trend setter. Shorter than average, Louis wore four inch heels. Over time he had red heels put on all his shoes and decreed that only the upper class of society could have red heels. Could this be the reason why Christian Louboutin (not Yves St Laurent) has red soles on all his high heels?

Women soon started wearing heels in a show of equality. Fashion began to adapt into more affordable versions and eventually the trend filtered down to the other classes. The elite’s response was to make their heels higher, more expensive. They also began to distinguish heels between the sexes, men’s heels were wide and women’s heels were skinny.

Eventually, men gave up high heels completely. Since the 18^th century, men’s shoes have been mostly low heels.

For my Lord Arik… high heels wouldn’t work. In my story, Knight of Rapture, Lord Arik finds himself in the 21^st century. To integrate into the era he dons clothes of the day. Not too bad!

Here Be News

New Releases

Veronica Scott's latest scifi romance Star Cruise: Outbreak was released a week early. The story:

She saved countless soldiers in the wars … but does she have the weapons to fight an outbreak?

Dr. Emily Shane, veteran of the Sector Wars, is known as “The Angel of Fantalar” for her bravery under fire as a medic. However, the doctor has her own war wounds–severe PTSD and guilt over those she failed to save.

Persuaded to fill a seemingly frivolous berth as ship’s doctor on the huge and luxurious interstellar cruise liner Nebula Zephyr, she finds the job brings unexpected perks–a luxe beach deck with water imported from Tahumaroa II, and Security Officer Jake Dilon, a fellow veteran who heats her up like a tropical sun.

However, Emily soon learns she and Jake didn’t leave all peril behind in the war. A mysterious ailment aboard the Zephyr begins to claim victim after victim … and they must race against time and space to find the cause and a cure! Trapped on a ship no spaceport will allow to dock, their efforts are complicated by a temperamental princess and a terrorist–one who won’t hesitate to take down any being in the way of his target. If anyone’s left when the disease is through with them …

Buy Links:     Amazon    Kobo    Barnes & Noble  More coming soon!

Other News

Kensington Books is sponsoring a Goodreads giveaway of 25 copies of Jeffe Kennedy's upcoming release, THE PAGES OF THE MIND.



AN ORPHAN’S THRONE

Magic has broken free over the Twelve Kingdoms. The population is beset by shapeshifters and portents, landscapes that migrate, uncanny allies who are not quite human…and enemies eager to take advantage of the chaos.

Dafne Mailloux is no adventurer—she’s a librarian. But the High Queen trusts Dafne’s ability with languages, her way of winnowing the useful facts from a dusty scroll, and even more important, the subtlety and guile that three decades under the thumb of a tyrant taught her.

Dafne never thought to need those skills again. But she accepts her duty. Until her journey drops her into the arms of a barbarian king. He speaks no tongue she knows but that of power, yet he recognizes his captive as a valuable pawn. Dafne must submit to a wedding of alliance, becoming a prisoner-queen in a court she does not understand. If she is to save herself and her country, she will have to learn to read the heart of a wild stranger. And there are more secrets written there than even Dafne could suspect…

World Building-SCIFI Rules!

I thought I'd talk today about world building. Every story has a particular world at its core.  Contemporaries deal with what we know, the world we live in every day.  Urban fantasies are a mix of contemporaries with monsters and fae living among us. Historicals must adhere to what was possible back “then,” as well as tie into the historical landscape. Paranormals make up their own rules, where ghosts, goblins, angels and demons can run amuck in their world.

And then there are the futuristics, one of my personal favorite genres.  Nothing like building a world from scratch.  Planets where the ore is red and priceless, and the inhabitants that mine there are eight feet tall with three sets of hands. Or spaceships that make use of worm holes to travel between galaxies full of fantastic creatures. Are all the aliens humanoid in appearance (hello Star Trek)?  Or do they resemble goo, snakes, blobs of plasm like amoebas?  

The potential for anything goes really exists in the futuristic world, because the author can create anything she/he wants... so long as the rules are consistent. It makes no sense to have the Falu people tall, lithe and purple in one book, while in the next they are short, squat and blue. If the Raggas are built like brick houses and miners, then they can’t suddenly have a history for being thieving, mercenary criminals who are both nimble and built on smaller lines. 

I started out writing futuristics, and I had more problems with consistency than anything.  Until I kept a detailed notebook on my world based in the Vrail system, I found it difficult to write them. Once I made careful notes of what planet produced what goods and what types of people, my stories started really coming together. Fun stuff, especially since the scientists on planet Eyra threw a monkey-wrench into everything by Creating a new race of beings, quite illegally. 

I love when folks break the law in the worlds I’ve created. It gives my peacemakers something to do, and they have a tendency to fall in love in the oddest places. 

And that’s what makes writing so much fun.  A guaranteed happy ending among the stars.

Marie

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