Authors: Cynthia Woolf
’Til death parted them, she was his and his alone.
Certain she’d been lost to him forever, the shock of spotting her again in LoDo, a lower downtown section of Denver, nearly brought him to his knees. His brain tried to tell him he was mistaken. She had more curves than he remembered. Her hairstyle and clothes were different.
The others were different, too.
He shook his head against the monster’s treacherous whisper. He refused to listen. Couldn’t listen. This time, when his angel smiled at him, his soul recognized her. Somehow, some way, his fractious God had been appeased and given him yet another chance.
The past seven days were hell. Watching her. Wanting to take her. Knowing he couldn’t screw up and lose her again. Tonight, his preparations in place, she’d return to his side where she belonged. And this time, he wouldn’t let her go.
Breathing slow and measured through the full-face ski mask he’d bought at a thrift store, he sucked in a lungful of musty stench. In this uncommon late-May heat wave, he was sweating bullets but the wool soaked it up before it could sting his eyes. The itching would drive him insane, though, if she didn’t come home from work soon.
The LoDo sports bar where she waited tables closed almost an hour ago. She couldn’t have gone on a date at two o’clock on a Thursday morning, could she?
Three times he’d entered her ground floor apartment after she’d left for work, and he’d seen no sign she was involved with anyone. No jockey shorts mixed with her panties in the hamper. No extra razor. The food in the refrigerator wasn’t enough to feed a cat, let alone her and a boyfriend, and the only scent on her pillows was floral. The sole message from a male on her answering machine had identified himself as a special research librarian from the Denver Public Library reminding her to pick up the copy of “The Warwick Genealogy” she’d requested.
That doesn’t mean she isn’t still involved with
him
, the almighty scion of Thorne Enterprises. She’s probably crawling into his bed like a whore right this minute, letting him do things to her, making her scream….
Screams.
Blood.
Death.
“No! Stop! That didn’t happen,” he whispered. “That was a mistake!”
Was it?
The insidious question lashed him from the dark place in his pounding mind.
He rejected the smirking voice, the vivid images. Think of something else. Anything else. Forgetforgetfor—
A car alarm screamed in an outlying parking lot and dragged him out of his fugue. His eyes cleared. The pain behind them eased to a level he’d learned to carry over the years. He took a deep breath to smother his panic.
Soon, he would kill the nightmares forever. Patrick Thorne would die and the secrets with him. But the contractor hadn’t been punished enough yet. Before he finished, he’d ruin Thorne’s reputation, his livelihood, and destroy everything he loved most in the world.
Just as Thorne destroyed our life.
The man must die! Now!
Restless to escape its bonds the monster thrust knife-hot pain into his skull, but he pushed it back into the shadows and locked it down. Retribution was almost at hand, but not tonight. This night was about her.
Where the hell was she?
There! Her tennis shoes slapped the sidewalk as she approached. He caught a flash of uniform—shorts and sports shirt, both too tight for decency. Then she walked out of the weak light that pooled across the commons into the dark well that led to her door. Her building superintendent had replaced her broken porch light this morning, but he’d smashed it again. He smiled when she cursed someone named Ronnie.
With a jingle of keys, she passed the niche he’d carved for himself in the shrubs. A punch of adrenaline surged through him, made him lightheaded with anticipation. He shook the buzz from his head and crashed out of the bushes with more noise than he intended.
Her head snapped left. She shot a glance over her shoulder. Her eyes widened. She lunged for the safety of her door.
He chased after her, grabbed her by the throat. A squeeze of her windpipe cut off her scream. He didn’t want to damage her too much. He just needed to get her alone.
To atone. To give him another chance.
With her soft body pressed against him, he groaned with pleasure. It had been so long! For a moment he forgot his purpose, lost in the new scent of her, in the innocent softness of her curves against him. Her breasts were full beneath his forearm. The sweet curve of her bottom cradled his stiff penis. With another groan, his grip relaxed.
She screamed. Struggling, she broke loose of his hold.
Shit! Reaching out, he snagged her long ponytail and yanked her back hard. With his other hand, he strangled her next scream into a whimper. “Do that again,” he grated, “I’ll use my knife.” The honed blade was secure in his pocket but she didn’t know that.
“I have money,” she croaked. “Three hundred. Tips. In my pocket. Please! Don’t—”
“Shh. Don’t fight me. Shhh,” he crooned into her hair. He tugged a chloroform-laced rag from his pants pocket and fitted it over her nose and mouth. “Just give me another chance, Angel, and everything will be fine.”
This time she’d make the right choice because, God only knew, he’d truly go insane if he had to kill her all over again.
Excerpt from
Red Night
by Michele Callahan
Chapter One
Timewalker Taken:
Alexa, Seventeenth Daughter of Aryssa
Mission:
Present Day, Earth - Destroy the Red Death
Talent:
Invisibility
Despite years of warnings, Alexa was not prepared for the freezing shock of her journey to Earth. She wanted to scream in agony, but she had no air to breathe in this in-between dimension. Her mother had explained the frigid reality of the time strands, how her naked flesh would feel as if it were being systematically stripped to her bones by endless shards of splintering ice. This one-way trip to the past would last less than a minute. One minute in her own personal Purgatory, and her sins had been many. So, she gritted her teeth and waited. Waited for the agony to subside. Waited for the nirvana of soft green grass brushing at her skin like a thousand tickling fingertips.
Her mother had been Taken, and her mother before her, and so on, since the Archivers had begun recording the Chronicles Of Time. Death or Service. That had been her ancestor’s choice nearly four hundred years ago, and the eldest daughter in each generation now owed the Archiver a life. The family gift—invisibility—had been handed down from mother to daughter for seventeen generations. Her heritage swelled her head and chest with pride. But the unrelenting grip of her ancestry also squeezed her with arduous pressure, demanding she not fail. She did not want to be the first of her line to bring her name dishonor. However, a far heavier burden threatened to pull her into the suffocating quicksand of fear. Billions of lives were at stake. Billions.
She would not fail. She was ready. Her mother had ensured that, taught her how to use her gift to cloak her presence, prepared her for the call of the Archiver and the freezing strands. The Taken were never called upon to ride the strands of time unless the assignment was of catastrophic importance. There was no such thing as an easy task. She had also warned her daughter not to fall victim to the pounding of the blood, the passion of her Gift, until it was safe to do so. The distraction would endanger the strand of time she must now, and forever after, walk upon.
Forever. In a strange world.
Alone.
Panic rose in a crescendo to choke her. Then, as quickly as her roller coaster ride through this icy hell began, it was over. Precious air flooded her starving lungs with heat. She lay semi-conscious on the soft ground and tried to get her bearings as a torrent of warm rain crashed down upon her. A single tear escaped and mingled with the rain on her face. Reality squeezed her heart so tightly she feared it would stop beating. She had arrived, unscathed. There was no going back.
Earth, Midnight, May 6, 2013. Unless the Archiver had erred.
Heaven help her then. Heaven help the world.
* * *
Never once, in all the years of her rebellious youth, had she ever been a thief. How ironic that now, when the fate of this world hung in the balance, everything she had was contraband. She leaned back into the taxi’s sticky plastic seat and hoped the crisp white cotton Capri pants and shirt wouldn’t be ruined by the filth. A twenty-dollar bill burned in her pocket to pay the cabbie. Alexa sunk her teeth into a huge red apple and hoped the fruit would provide enough energy to keep her going for a few hours. Doom Central was calling her name.
Alexa laughed out loud at her own joke and ignored the cab driver’s questioning glance. The overworked cabbie should be used to seeing all sorts of odd things in a city the size of San Antonio. But even here, she knew she was unique. Her waist-length hair was braided and so pale it gleamed silver. Her eyes flashed a vivid blue in a heart-shaped face. Father had always said she was sixty-two inches of trouble wrapped up in a deceptively innocent looking package. The thought made her want to laugh. And cry.
Too soon the cab driver dropped her off at her destination, one of a handful of Biosafety Level 4 laboratories in the country. The lucky place which, in three days time, would be the epicenter of the end of the world. Earth 8 had died a slow and painful death. It took just under five years from the first diagnosed case of “Red Death” for ninety-five percent of the world’s population to be wiped out. And it all started here. No-Where-Ville, Texas. A party like any other…a night colored red with blood.
Yes. She had three more days to track down the two men in charge, erase every piece of data related to the virus, and break into that lab and kill every single cell of “Mutation-6 of Ebola” in existence. M-6 they called it, until it escaped. Then it became the “Red Death”, named for the hemorrhagic nature of the victim’s death. They should have called it, “stupid-what-the-hell-were-we-thinking?”
Excerpt from
While You Were Dead
by CJ Snyder
Prologue
Twelve years ago
Kat Jannsen didn’t cry the day they buried Maxwell Crayton.
Plenty of others did. Mourners gathered four and five deep around the long, flag-draped coffin. Even more had packed the church, but Kat skipped the God part.
She stayed back by a tree, feeling out of place, uninvited, unwelcome and wondering about the flag. Military? What other secrets had he kept?
Kat couldn’t say why she’d come. Except she’d loved him, as she’d never loved another human being in her life. So much hope about to be buried in that coffin. So many dreams. So much despair left behind.
His actual death shouldn’t have made a difference. He’d been missing for two months before he died. He’d tossed her away like a used Sunday paper three months before that.
Now Kat shivered in the cold, sleeting rain. She gave her head a vicious shake, warding off the tears that threatened for the first time in days. She straightened her shoulders. You will not cry. She had no right to attend the family’s service, but she represented someone who did.
Her gaze darted over the ring of mourners. They were folding the flag. In just moments she’d know. They’d give the flag to Miriam, the sister who’d raised him. Miriam. Kat’s baby’s one chance at a sane life. Anguish wrenched her heart. Sorrow for Max, sorrow for this baby she already loved too much to keep. Kat fought her tears so she could see the woman who held her future—her child’s very life—in her hands.
The soldier stopped in front of an older woman and Kat frowned. Miriam was forty-three, fifteen years older than Max. This woman looked a decade older than that. Too old? No. She couldn’t be too old. Women had babies in their forties all the time. Bereavement might make her look older.
An even older man supported Miriam, his arm strong and sturdy around her shoulders. Five others surrounded them, forming a protective half-circle around the couple. Two nephews, Max’d said. Nephews with wives, or at least girlfriends? Grown nephews? The woman turned her head in response to something her husband said and Kat caught her breath, nearly undone by the naked pain on the face that so closely resembled Max’s own. The resemblance was nearly as close as that between her own mother and herself.
So this was Miriam. So much grief. She must have loved her brother very much. But Kat hadn’t expected her to be so old. She’d pictured a warm, loving younger couple. For just a moment, she sagged back against the tree.
It’s never easy, Kat. Max’s words, and before that her mother’s. Words to live by. Why would she expect this to be any different?
You don’t have a choice, Kat. Unless you damn your sweet baby before it even draws a breath.
All true. No choices, no options, except to entrust her innocent child into the hands of fate. No. Better to trust Miriam.
More movement at the graveside. Mourners began to greet Miriam and her husband. Time to go. Kat wouldn’t intrude today. But soon. There wasn’t much time.