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.

PROJECT SERAPHIM: RELEASE DATE

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.

Excerpt from SERAPHIM ASCENT

From Chapter Twenty-three: Good Morning, Nevada!

Tejinder Wakeman had given up on the prospect of being a morning person, when his prime hours reeled through the night. Aiden must have known this as well...

Which was why Tejinder had found it weird to wake up that evening to a knock at the door downstairs. When the knocking stopped, he flopped over the sheets and attempted to fall back asleep.

Then the knocking started again. Louder. Tejinder groaned, tired and hungover, and threw a pillow over his head. This did not stop the knocking, which turned into a relentless pounding at his door. The hostile presence in itself left Tejinder wishing he could call the cops.

He realized that the only guy he could call now was the cops... kind of. But he also didn’t feel like dialing Aiden. If this just happened to be one of the food services he might have ordered in his sleep (in which case this wouldn’t be the first time), it would have been embarrassing.

“All right...” Tejinder yawned. He grabbed for his sunglasses by the nightstand and rolled out of bed. His bare feet weaved around the broken glass at the bottom of the stairs; remnants of a drunken tantrum earlier that morning. At this point he couldn’t differentiate the hammering pain from the door to the hangover, or both. “All right, cut it out! I’m unlocking the damn door. Just so you know, I have a shotgun.”

Someone stood at the door Tejinder just swung open.

“So do I.”