Excerpt from Seraphim STORM

Jericho, Alaska — When he came to, Aiden Winters’ head reeled with a ringing in his ears. The last thing he remembered was the hotel room: Standing by the window, buildings erupting, people screaming as they stampeded out into the blistering storm. Glass in his face, his neck.  

Then black.

He was no longer in the hotel. Now he was on his back, over snow.

Ears still ringing, Aiden rolled his neck, eyes scanning the area. Around him was the pedestrian walkway over a bridge, one that had still been under construction as they hadn’t yet properly paved the entire thing. Tarps draped from the upper cables and towers, shielding the bridge from the blizzard. The tarps were torn and stained with dried blood.

Moving to get up, Aiden hissed and fell back down. Pain shot through his hip. He rolled up the sleeve of his jacket, finding the inside of his forearm gashed up. Judging by the rush job of the stitches, whoever patched him up didn’t have much time.

Excerpt from SERAPHIM ASCENT

Prologue

“Fiery the angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll’d.
Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc.”
— William Blake, America: A Prophecy

They were born underground, in a facility called Niflheim. A boy and a girl, with golden hair and lime colored eyes. Prisoners of four white walls; a single metal door secured shut. The full spectrum light flooded from the ceiling, over the twins. Both bearing the same angular jawline, pointed noses, and narrowed faces.

From the lookout station that surveyed the white room, Dr. Stransky pressed her hand to the glass barrier that divided her and the twins several feet below. Though they weren’t human, though they didn’t look a day older than sixteen, though they had been fabricated of alloy and human flesh, she thought of them as her own in an odd way. Her heart wrenched; she listened to the director of the Niflheim Research Facility speak to the children.

“You are vessels. You’re born to die,” he said through the intercom, his voice booming into the white room. “Do you understand this?”

Crouching at the left of the boy, the girl replied: “Yes.”

Before her brother spoke, the boy burst into flames.