Red

At the end of the row of bookshelves, I peeked around the corner. They were still playing their stupid game.

  The first two would count it down, “Three, two, one, GO!” and toss the books.

  Then the other two would say, “Ashes to ashes!” and “Dust to dust!” at practically the same time they destroyed the targets.

  Losers. I was debating what to say when a girl rushed out of the center aisle into the middle of them to bang on the door to the back room. Yeah, hon, just step right in the middle of a contest between the guy with the flame and the guy with the—disintegration ray power. Whatever. It’s not always easy to come up with names for some of these Talents.

  The door was yanked open and Marco stepped out. My stomach did something unpleasant. Okay, I’ll admit I was kind of scared of my nemesis. Call it post-traumatic stress. Mr. I-Can-Bench-Press-A-Steel-Girder did almost kill me not too long ago. When I looked at him, I imagined the feel of his hands around my throat, right before Dylan tackled him and saved my life. I so did not want to take Marco on again.

  “You’re screwing up Angie’s concentration, Bella. What do you want?”

  “Corey was feeling me up again when I was out of my body.”

  “What?” came a voice from the stacks. “She wasn’t using it.”

  “Cor, this isn’t a date-rape opportunity, it’s a job. If you get your rocks off fondling unconscious chicks, get some GHB and do it on your time. Or take Sleepy, here, for a night on the town.”

  “My name is Curtis,” the freshman whined, indignant.

  “Like anyone cares,” Jeff said.

  “Hey, you guys need to get back to business. Now. Angie’s still working on the safe. Bella, get your virtual ass back up to the roof and do your job.”

  “Okay, but I thought you’d want to know that some girl went down the alley and was looking in the windows.”

  “What?” Marco asked, in a dangerous tone that made the boys sit up, but didn’t seem to affect Bella very much.

  “Yeah, dark-haired girl in an army jacket? Looked kind of like Joss Marshall.”

  Oh shit. I pulled back behind the stacks and started to move toward the window.

  He came through the bookcase. I mean through the bookcase. One minute there was no one between me and the window, and the next there was a shimmer to the air in the form of a body coming out of the books. It grabbed me hard while it was still fading back into Corey Danvers. He smiled at me as he jerked me into the back aisle where everyone could see me.

  “And look what I found.”

  ~*~

  I hope you enjoyed this excerpt from Heroes ’Til Curfew. The Talent Chronicles series introduces a world in which kids with supernatural abilities must hide their powers from a government that seeks to imprison them. This second installment, as well as the first book, Hush Money, are available in ebook and paperback at many online retailers. A free short story, Impulse Control, is also available in electronic form. Please visit http://susan-bischoff.com/talent-chronicles for links and information.

  Don’t Fear The Reaper by Michelle Muto

  Grief-stricken by the murder of her twin, Keely Morrison is convinced suicide is her ticket to eternal peace and a chance to reunite with her sister. When Keely succeeds in taking her own life, she discovers death isn’t at all what she expected. Instead, she’s trapped in a netherworld on Earth and her only hope for reconnecting with her sister and navigating the afterlife is a bounty-hunting reaper and a sardonic, possibly unscrupulous, demon. But when the demon offers Keely her greatest temptation—revenge on her sister's murderer—she must uncover his motives and determine who she can trust. Because, as Keely soon learns, both reaper and demon are keeping secrets and she fears the worst is true—that her every decision will change how, and with whom, she spends eternity.

  Excerpt

  Tim pulled the drawer open, “The medical examiner will be here shortly. There’s an autopsy scheduled—drawer six, not you. Anyway, you’ve only got about five minutes, Keely.”

  Daniel turned to me. “You okay with this?”

  “I need to see,” I said, staring at the form draped under the sheet.

  Daniel rested a hand on my arm. “You sure? You don’t look so well.”

  I forced a smile. “I don’t look so well because I’m dead.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have come here.”

  “I need to see, Daniel. I’m good. Really.” And I did need to see.

  “Five minutes,” Tim reminded me. “Place the sheet over the body and slide the door shut when you’re done. We can’t have anyone walking in and finding the drawers open and you won’t be able to close them once the medical examiner arrives.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Sure. No problem.”

  “Liar,” Daniel said. “You’re gonna make one hell of a demon, Sunshine.” He and Tim walked through the doors, leaving me alone.

  I walked toward drawer number nine, listening to the rapid breathing echoing in my ears, feeling the cold draft from the cooler raise the flesh on my skin. It felt like a horror movie. In the surrounding quiet, I heard my heartbeat spiking in my chest and my runaway imagination heard another, louder heartbeat from under the sheet. My hand extended in front of me and I watched as it pulled back the sheet.

  This was where a horror flick derailed from real life. If this were some B movie, I’d scream as the body lying on the cold slab of drawer number nine opened its eyes. It wouldn’t be me, of course. It’d be the tortured and rotting body of my sister, the ligature marks around her neck caked with blood. The corpse would raise a broken, sheared finger at me, accusingly. It would tell me that I should have been with her, should have saved her.

  But it was me.

  Just me.

  Despite the cold temperature of the morgue refrigerator, I could detect a slight, rank undercurrent of odor.

  I stared at my body. I’d come all this way, run off from Banning to find my sister. But, now, as I stood alone in this chilly room, I had a chance to explain to my decaying corpse why I’d taken my life. How that’d help, I didn’t know. Maybe it was like some sort of obligation, some sort of letting go. Maybe that’s why everyone else had gathered outside. This wasn’t making peace with death, I wouldn’t go that far. But it felt close. Resignation?

  I brushed a hand across the arm of my corpse. It was smooth and cold, the skin still pliable to my touch. I wanted to apologize for never having graduated high school, gone to college or gotten a real job—all the things Jordan and I had talked about. I wanted to say I was sorry that I’d never move to another city, get an apartment. The list appeared endless. I was sorry that I would never get married, get a house, a dog, have kids.

  Grow old.

  Instead, I’d grown cold. One of my eyes was open—just a slit. The once mossy iris had turned a fetid, milky green.

  Me. Not me.

  I withdrew my hand. I didn’t need to catch my reflection in the surrounding stainless steel drawers to know the body inside drawer number nine wasn’t me. Not anymore. I was only seeing the waxy remains of what used to be me. The cadaver shared the same dark brown hair, the same angled face, same high cheekbones. But I had nothing else in common with the stiffened corpse lying before me. Lividity had settled in, speckling the skin near my back. Had my sister visited her own body, sitting and taking stock of her former life? Of what should have been? Had it been easier for her to just come see my corpse?

  ~*~

  For more information on where to buy, check out Michelle’s website: http://michellemuto.wordpress.com/

  Descended By Blood by Angeline Kace

  Brooke Keller is a high school junior who never spent much time living in one place. She's finally in a town long enough to almost snag the boy of her dreams, until her life is threatened by a fanged man in his attempt to kidnap her. Brooke begins a dangerous journey to find out who is after her and how to stop them. Thrown into a world with powerful and prejudiced vampires, Brooke must tap into the side of hersel
f that she never knew existed, at the risk of losing her life in order to save it.

  Excerpt

  A twig snapped, and I jerked my head to the right. I caught the glint from the eyes of a mountain lion creeping toward us, his ears pulled back, teeth bared.

  I froze, hoping we weren’t the prey he stalked.

  Kaitlynn shrieked. She grabbed my arm and tried pulling me with her as she ran back to the cars.

  The lion rose from his crouch and started charging down the mountain straight for us.

  We didn’t have enough time for both of us to make it out of there alive, and the lion sped up at the site of Kaitlynn running away.

  I planted my feet. Something clicked inside of me; heat coursed through my veins. My vision intensified, and I could distinguish the areas of down between the lion’s coarse fur as his muscles flexed and stretched.

  I’d heard before that you shouldn’t look a wild animal directly in its eyes, but my instinct screamed for me to not turn my back on my attacker. I listened to my gut and looked the mountain lion square into his charging eyes.

  The lion and I connected on an intellectual level: predator versus predator. Only I knew, and I deemed the lion knew, as well, that I outranked him as the more fearsome predator. How I recognized this, or how I knew the lion realized this, I couldn’t fathom. I had never been hunting before, so this instinct didn’t come from a belief that man ruled supreme on the food chain. And this moment felt different somehow. It wasn’t man versus beast; it was beast versus beast.

  “Stop!” I commanded.

  The lion skidded to a halt four feet in front of me, his back fixed in its pre-lunge arch. He stared into my eyes, his ears perked back, fangs exposed in a snarl and hackles raised, but he didn’t move a centimeter closer.

  I towered over him. My pulse pounded at the sides of my neck; my shoulders rose and fell with my deep breaths. My gaze pierced him, welding his toes and the pads of his feet into the ground. Somehow, I had been able to force my command over him, and when I told him to stop, I never considered that he would deny my order.

  The nerves along my scalp tingled with the sensation that the lion hungered to attack me, but he couldn’t. The only thing holding him back from pouncing me was my decree that he shouldn’t. My beast had prevailed as the most dominant between us.

  Panic filled my lungs at the realization that something stirred within me and it caused me to look at myself as a beast. I yearned for the retreat that Kaitlynn had made. I yelled, “Leave!” before the lion could translate my hesitance and continue his attack.

  He hissed, spun around, and ran up the side of the hill, tail flogging behind him. I studied his movements, hoping that he wouldn’t change his mind and come back.

  Kaitlynn rushed up behind me. “Brooke, let’s go!” she pleaded, voice shaking.

  I stood there, to make absolutely sure. We had some distance to run before we’d get back to our vehicles, and I wasn’t going to take any chances on being stuck in that lion’s jaws.

  The creature was almost out of the small clearing and about to enter into the thick forest when a man stepped out from between two spruce trees. Like a housecat, the lion rubbed his fawn pelt against the man’s leg and purred. My hypersensitive hearing digested the happy rumble cascading down the hill. Over the purring, I heard the trill of crickets and further out, the crunch of leaves underneath small feet. How was that possible?

  The man loomed, barely outside the shadows, in a dark trench coat, smiling. His malignant stare reached my eyes, and his smirk grew by spades.

  ~*~

  For more visit www.angelinekace.com

  An excerpt from

  Fairy Metal Thunder

  (Songs of Magic, Book 1)

  by J.L. Bryan

  Fairy Metal Thunder is the story of a teenage garage who steal magical instruments from the fairy world and use them to become rock stars.

  Saturday night, Jason sat at home in his living room, his guitar in his lap, trying to pick out the music for “Angel Sky,” the song he'd written for Erin. He was having trouble getting the music and lyrics to flow together.

  His mother had dragged his father to a collectible ceramics convention in Minneapolis, an hour away, and they still weren't back.

  “Jason?” Katie asked. His little sister stood in the doorway of the living room in her Bert and Ernie pajamas.

  “What is it, Katie?”

  “Um...” She fidgeted, looking nervous.

  “What's wrong? You should be sleeping.”

  “I know, but...there's a monster.”

  Jason sighed and put his guitar down. “Did you have a bad dream?”

  “It's not a dream! I saw it go into Mom and Dad's room.”

  “If it's not in your room, you don't have anything to worry about.”

  “But I could be next!” Katie looked terrified.

  “You're completely safe, Katie. There's no monster.”

  “Is too!”

  “Okay.” Jason stood up and stretched. “Let's go check it out. I’ll show you there's nothing to be scared of.”

  “Thanks, Jason.” She took his hand as he walked toward the steps, something she hadn't done in a couple of years. She really was frightened.

  They walked upstairs and to the end of the short hall in their split-level house. Katie stayed back, clinging to the frame of her bedroom door, while Jason approached the master bedroom.

  “See, Katie?” he said. “Mom and Dad’s door is still closed. How could a monster get into their room?”

  “He just went puff,” Katie said.

  “He went puff, huh?” Jason said. He had no idea what that meant, but Katie had a very busy imagination.

  Jason pushed open the door to his parents' room and glanced inside. “See, Katie, there's no....”

  But Jason had seen something. He looked again.

  There it was—a small creature, about two feet high, standing on his parents' dresser. It looked like a tiny person, dressed in a ratty, dirty wool overcoat, with a woolen cap pulled low over its eyes. Its pudgy green hands pawed through his mother's jewelry box. Jason watched the creature drop a pair of ruby earrings into a pocket of its coat.

  “Hey!” Jason said.

  The little creature jumped and spun around to face him. Its face was green and ugly, with an underbite, its eyes big and yellow under the low bill of the cap.

  “What are you?” Jason asked.

  The thing growled a little, then disappeared in a puff of green smoke. It reappeared in the space in front of the dresser, near the bottom drawer, and landed on its feet, which were clad in small, badly cracked leather shoes. It ran across the carpet to the window. It disappeared in another green puff, then reappeared standing on the windowsill.

  “Stop!” Jason yelled. “Give that back!”

  The little creature stuck out its dark green tongue at Jason, then disappeared with another puff of smoke. It reappeared on the little ledge outside the window, waved at Jason with a smile full of yellow, crooked teeth, and then hopped out of sight.

  “Hey!” Jason ran to the window and opened it. He saw the creature blink in and out of visibility as it tumbled to the back yard, leaving a trail of green smoke fading in the air.

  Jason hurried out of his parents' room, past Katie, who was crouching behind her door, poking out her head.

  “Did you see the monster?” she whispered.

  “Don't worry, I chased it away.” Jason started down the steps. “But it stole some jewelry from Mom. I'll go get it back.”

  Katie stepped out of her room and walked to the top stair.

  “Can I come?” she asked.

  “No, Katie! Wait here. I'll be right back.”

  “But I want to come with!” Katie crossed her arms and pouted.

  “No! I'm serious, Katie.”

  Jason ran through the living room and out onto their concrete slab of a patio. He saw the little green man trampling through a flower bed at the edge of the yard. The creature
reached the neighbor's split-rail fence and puffed through it.

  Jason raced to the fence and leaped over. When his shoes hit the ground, the creature turned its green face to look back at him, snarled, and put on speed. It puffed in and out of sight, jumping forward about a foot each time.

  Jason hurried to keep up as the creature shot forward across his neighbor's lawns. The little thing could move fast, but Jason had much longer legs than it did, and he gained on the creature.

  He was determined to catch it, and not just to recover his mother's stolen earrings. If this little monster was the one who'd been stealing jewelry all over town, then it might have Erin's necklace, too. Jason could already imagine how happy Erin would be when Jason returned it to her.

  He chased the creature into Mrs. Gottfried's yard, which was full of toy windmills and fake plastic birds. Jason caught up with it and reached one hand down to grab the creature by the scruff of its neck. Then the creature disappeared in another green puff, and Jason realized too late that the little monster had led him directly toward a low stone bench. Jason was running too fast to stop.

  His shins cracked into the bench, and Jason spilled forward, falling among a family of plastic ducks.

  Ahead of him, the little creature turned and laughed, revealing its crooked yellow teeth again. Its laughter sounded like a hyena.

  By the time Jason scrambled to his feet, the green creature was across Mrs. Gottfried's lawn and puffing its way across the main road outside Jason's neighborhood.

  Jason chased him through three more neighborhoods, activating motion-detector lights here and there when he came too close to a house. The little green guy seemed to have no effect on the motion detectors—they only clicked to life when Jason passed.