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 Hush

From the short story: Hush, January 1968

The man in the fern green suit and the pointed hat leaned over the body of Hannah’s mother. “What’s your name, little one?” He smiled like that used car lot salesman when her father had bought them the very Volkswagen she sat in.

Now the white leather upholstery was stained with Mom’s blood as the man got into the car with Hannah. The windows were smeared with the same stuff after the man in the green suit had attempted to wipe it off after he’d asked Hannah his question. He then assumed the driver’s seat, leaving Mom behind in the parking lot of the unattended gas station, where it was dark and no one seemed to be working. Mom had stopped because of a flat tire when the man in green, claiming to be a local on a late night stroll, came upon them to help replace the tire. Only after doing so, Hannah had watched as the man raised the same tire iron he’d used to help Mom with over his head, and began beating her in so many times that her skull caved inward.

The last Hannah saw her mother was through the rear window, as the man in green pulled the Volkswagen back onto the freeway. They weren’t going home like Mom had promised. The man didn’t say where they were going. All he did was turn up the radio, from which he commenced singing along to Angel of the Morning as if Hannah didn’t exist in the same car as he.

Hannah didn’t answer the man when he had asked her name. The girl just clung to her Shrinkin’ Violet doll her mom bought for her sixth birthday four years ago. She was too old now to be hugging dolls when men scared her, no matter what. But she had long since discarded Shrinkin’ Violet into the Volkswagen many years ago, and Mom was no longer here. Hannah had nothing to hold onto but an annoying talking doll. The man glanced to her frequently with those narrow black eyes in the rearview mirror. He still sang along with Merrilee Rush from the radio in his smooth, surprisingly melodic voice.

Excerpt from What The Thunder Said

From Part One: In The Mountains, There You Feel Free...

Wermut was nowhere to be found. 

Rather, it was almost as though Wermut never existed. When Sergeant Stone spoke with the people at the Shiner Casino, they all swore up and down that they never saw an amber-eyed woman sharing Wermut’s description. 

Since tracking down the dealer turned out to be a lost cause, Stone sought out her fellow players at the poker table. She saw the boy leave an hour ago, and the married couple left during a heated argument shortly after. 

Eventually, she bumped into the old man in the bowler hat, using his winnings from their card game at the slots. 

“I’m telling you, our dealer was a Brazilian dwarf, not some amber-eyed woman. And it was definitely a man... Are you sure you’re not on some fuses? You smell a little funny to me.” Not once did he avert his attention from the slots, pulling the lever repeatedly. 

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.”