THE DARK THRESHOLD, Excerpt #3

A new excerpt. Thank you all for your patience. Enjoy!

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“Amanda?” It was Juan, calling from the parlor entrance. “Amanda? Are you all right?”

Amanda did not turn at the sound of her name, but she involuntarily stiffened. “Define ‘all right,’” she whispered to the glass.

Juan cleared his throat. “Are you all right here with Helena? Can I get you anything?”

Amanda picked at the windowsill where a scrap of paint had chipped away, leaving a crescent of bare wood. She sniffed out a bitter chuckle. “Why would you want to do anything for me, Juan?”

“Pardon?”

“I’m the reason you’re all fucked up right now.”

Juan made a noise deep in his throat, somewhere between a choked laugh and a grunt. “Maelstrom is the reason I’m like this. I should have known just how far he’d penetrated us, before I put all of you in harm’s way.”

Amanda’s eye widened. “Are you blaming yourself for me being a traitor?” she asked as she leaned a fist against the cold glass, wondering suddenly how much force it would take to punch through. “That’s too kind, even for you.”

“I never stopped being your friend, Amanda,” Juan replied softly.

“Then if you’re my friend, you’ll do one thing for me. Just one thing, Juan. And I won’t be refused.”

“If I can,” Juan replied, surprised. “Tell me.”

Amanda turned on her heel to face him. “I can only assume you’re leaving soon to help Norris. Tell me I’m right.”

Juan nodded. “You’re right. Why?”

“Because I want to come with you.”

The leader of Verite regarded her evenly, his face a mask. “Why?” he asked. “You’re under no obligation to go.”

Amanda studied the man, aware for the first time this evening how pale he looked. The drugs and maltreatment inflicted on him by Maelstrom had certainly taken their toll. Any doctor in her right mind would have told him one thing: go back to bed. Yet he would not go back to bed, she was sure. Juan had to be at the front of things, always on the cutting edge. Even if he was cut by that same edge. “Obligation?” she retorted. “None of us is under any obligation. Especially you in your condition.”

Juan detached himself from Helena and rubbed his face with his hands. “Fair enough,” he conceded. “I apologize.”

“I’m the best doctor you have,” Amanda continued, approaching Juan as she spoke. “Your soldiers are going to war for you. They are going to get shot up. Also, if you’re not going to get proper bedrest after what you’ve been through, then you ought to be monitored. And last but not least, if Daniel ever finds Anna, she’s going to be having a baby soon. Hell, I’m surprised that her stress hasn’t gotten that baby out by now.” Her eyes flashed. “Put me to work, Juan. Give me something to do so I don’t have to think about the past few days. I’m so tired of thinking. I want to do.”

THE DARK THRESHOLD, Excerpt #2

An excerpt from Chapter 3 of The Dark Threshold. Enjoy.

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     The moment Sandra first heard gunshots, she’d crouched back down on the porch where she and Luis had taken up station and sighted her rifle on Mr. Vickers’ house. When she couldn’t see anything in that direction, she turned her weapon back up the street towards the approaching trouble. “Luis, give me ranging info and speed on the lead Spyder.”

     Luis brought his binoculars to his face. “Not sure you can penetrate the powertrain of a Spyder from here,” he worried out loud.

     “I’m not going for the powertrain,” Sandra responded shortly. “Range, please.”

     Luis squinted into the binoculars. “One hundred fifteen yards, traveling at twenty miles per hour.” He slipped his hearing protection over his ears. “How does the windshield look to you?”

     “No deflection glass, these rounds will penetrate.”

     The radio crackled in her ear and she heard Daniel’s desperate voice, but the words he spoke didn’t even register in the moment before she pulled the trigger. The giant rifle exploded with power, sending its round streaking downrange in the blink of an eye. The lead Spyder’s windshield spiderwebbed and a gout of blood doused the glass from the inside. The vehicle abruptly swerved to its right, clipped a parked car, then spun out on the icy road in front of the autotank that rumbled along behind it. All three vehicles came to a messy stop in the middle of the road eighty yards away.

A New Excerpt For My Patient Audience

I'm almost reluctant to post this excerpt as it deals with a pivotal moment in the book, but I think it's both vague and enticing enough to whet your appetites more. This entire scene has been exhausting to write but I think it is coming together exactly the way I wanted it.

We are once again reminded that our heroine, Miss Annalise McLean, is no saint. What she is upset about remains for you to find out on launch day.

Have fun!


THE DEMON MAELSTROM, EXCERPT ----

Anna dissolved into a fresh wave of tears and buried her face in the couch pillow. After several body-racking sobs she let out a horrendous scream at the top of her lungs, only for the sound to die into the upholstered surface muffling her mouth. She screamed again and again into the pillow, feeling her throat vibrate and strain, emptying her lungs in one shriek of grief after another until nearly hoarse. She felt like wrecking something, like throwing Central Admin onto the floor in a rage and smashing it into tiny pieces as if it were fine china. She wanted Adam dead.

As she lay weeping on the couch a sudden craving rose up inside her, a bitter tide of lust for numbness and indifference in the face of all this despair. She knew that feeling all too well but it filled her now like it never had before, consuming her body with the urge she knew she should resist at all costs. Her stomach growled at her, her head swam a bit as a pulsating ache occupied itself with tormenting her left eye.

She wanted alcohol. Now.

Her willpower to resist evaporated. Once the decision had clicked over in her brain she acted almost without thinking. A kind of tunnel vision set in and she knew she was standing and moving towards the cabinet on the far wall. It was a kind of buffet service with a wide glassed-in cabinet on top, and behind the glass lay several bottles of choice red wine. A warning bell in her mind blared in vain that it was the wine Mr. Vickers used for mass, that she ought not even touch it much less drink it like the alcoholic she knew she was. She grabbed the door handles and pulled.

The cabinet rattled but didn't open. She pulled again, and only on the third tug realized that a lock held the doors fast shut. Some neuron in her brain spasmed and she pulled her sweater sleeve over her fist and struck the glass hard. The glass splintered with a muffled crack and she cleared it away hurriedly with her wrapped hand, then reached in for the closest bottle. In her rush to extract it from its nesting place she banged her fingers on the inside edge of the door, sending excruciating pain radiating up from her knuckles. Swearing hard, she snatched up the wine key from the lower shelf and knifed open the foil around the neck of the bottle, then drove the corkscrew into the cork and extracted it with the precision and speed of a former master of the art. Without even attempting to look for a glass of any kind she put the bottle to her lips and took a long swig.