Bumping Back at things in the Night... Autumn 2015
Urban Romance Science Fiction
Fantasy World Building News
alternate realities
YA
work in progress
Tales from a splintered mind
Final novel of Black, White & Red All Over Trilogy
What Next From the Looking-Glass Earth?
Love & Monsters, Amerikan Dreams, Amerikan Nightmares, Black, White & Red All Over, Demonville, Broken Glass and all characters contained within them © Rob Sharp 2015. These stories are works of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. This is a free magazine and may be downloaded and copied. The right for Robert Sharp to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Further information can be obtained by contacting: robsharpavalon@googlemail.com
I A “Boy reading comic” Production
n his new age of Self Publishing, there are now so many ways to get your stuff out there, but it’s catching an audience that’s the trick. Over the last few years I’ve been lucky enough to meet a few good publishers that like my work, but I finally feel the time is right to
Rikki and Rob Sharp... Two authors with one mind
combine everything I’ve been working on. Because that is the secret. Whether I’m writing Science Fiction, Young Adult or Crime as Rob, or steamy Romance and Supernatural stuff as Rikki, it’s all within the same shared universe. Characters and locations move between stories.
Where the joins occur, I’ll leave it to you readers to find. I’ve just got to find time to write it all. Love & Monsters combines numerous ISSUU ideas in one semi-regular magazine. When more short stories, novellas and novels are created, I’ll produce an issue 4, and so on.
Hopefully, if you like what you see and read you’ll track down my books and give them a try. After that, if you like the books, you’ll help spread the word. Because, there is a plan... Cover Pic: Sophie Khao
avalon2020
For the last decade there has been a race to amass arcane artefacts, led by hero-turned villain, Mr Smith. As the world prepares for SuperWar, self-styled curator of the strange, Anthony Leibowitz is obsessed in tracking down seventeen pilgrims, as foretold by Leonardo da Vinci, who may be able to defuse the coming conflagration. Corporate knee breaker, John Savage and his crew, the Gatecrashers are in the middle of this collecting frenzy, when Savage discovers the existence of his new best friend – the body-hoping Djinn, Mister Punch. The blue-skinned bastard tells him he is going to die. As the New Millennium kicks in, the team take on Smith in a Greenwich Village Curio Shop and the five are forced to kill each another. In 2003, The Company hires Leibowitz to investigate not only who killed the five Gatecrashers, but how they have come back to life and escaped from the morgue, three years later. It’s a chase across Amerika, from a hidden tribe inside an extinct volcano, five daemonic New York buildings surrounding a cursed garden, to a secret base hidden beneath the Statue of Liberty. It crosses the paths of a jungle lord turned politician, an immortal goddesses, a pirate queen, the ultimate scary vigilante, and an invisible Leprechaun. Whilst watching constantly are mysterious Tourists in orange diving suits and metal helmets, which only Leibowitz seems able to see. This three-volume tale is about one super-powered soldier who just wanted to make a difference, verses a man who keeps wildlife in his jacket pockets. Black, White & Red All Over isn’t just an old joke, it’s deadly serious… most of the time.
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BLACK, WHITE & RED ALL OVER: BOOKS 1 - 3
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Black, White & Red All Over is set on a Looking-Glass Earth much like our own, where everything you can ever imagine is possible. It’s the stuff you can’t imagine that creeps up behind you and bites your freaking head off!
Book 3: Preview
Epitaph October 7th 2003 Torrential rain lashed across New York City, as the grey cloud hugged the tops of the skyscrapers like a jealous lover, unwilling to let go. Normally moving at their own, never ending pace, the pedestrians were running for cover as the traffic came to a stand-still and the horns began to blare. There was a man staggering like a drunk down the centre of 5th Avenue… and he was completely naked. Not that the female population were complaining. He had the toned body of an athlete, and with his shaven head he cut quite a hot figure. But there was something odd about his complexion. His skin had more than a hint of grey. As he stumbled forward, drenched literally to the skin, he was mumbling to himself. “I failed…” the passers-bye caught him repeating over and over. “I failed to save John Savage…” The naked guy had one deep blue eye and one swirling golden eye. Having brought the traffic to a standstill, it was with the golden eye that he managed to cut through the rain and see an odd man in a baggy orange jumpsuit and a metal helmet looking down at him from the roof of one of the surrounding buildings. The Tourist, as these
intruders were colloquially called, had to wipe the rain from his visor to see out. When Mr Jupiter’s eagle-eye zoomed in on this khaki helmet, he saw a cartoon of a shark, mouth open and baring its teeth, but some property in the metal refused to let him see inside with his pentra-vision. “Screw this rain,” the guttural voice of the squat, but powerfully built man in the orange suit complained. “This is Jaws to Sunnybrook Farm. Jupiter has finally been spat out by Ouroboros. He’s below my current location, making a complete twat of himself. Suggest immediate extraction.” Not expecting the luxury of a reply, the agent coded as, Jaws crouched down and tightened his shield-system. Across the street, barely visible in the rain, a projection of a giant graphic Egyptian Eye was moving across the side of the building like a searchlight. As it slithered down onto the street with all the caution of a lizard, the Tourist held his breath, counting down the seconds. But when the Eye got within six feet of Mr Jupiter, the half-alien flickered like a bad hologram and faded out. Not realizing its near miss in its search for posthumans, the Eye moved on down the road. “The Enemy was here,” said Jaws softly to whoever was listening 19 years into the future. “She’s becoming far bolder than we remembered. I’m fading.” Then he too blinked out and the rain kept on thundering down. *** September 10th 2003 Anthony Leibowitz had decided to take his little sister (who was actually his elder sister by a good stretch) out for lunch. Since she had been granted a second life by the pagan goddess, Hecate, Rebecca had mostly stayed inside their papa’s House, cataloguing and researching Mordecai Leibowitz’s life’s work. As part of those diaries, essays, ramblings and general notes written on anything from the back of beer-mats to the reverse of Hittite tablets, the growing archive was extremely eclectic. Last week, Rebecca had been correlating the known history of the Shifting Empire, a society of traders who used Warp Ships to navigate into the Gap, just before the last Ice Age. The trouble being some of their wasp-striped ships had developed a habit of cropping up right through to the 13th Century AD. This week she had found a list of familiar looking names of Long-Lifers, written in the back of a handwritten draft copy of Shakespeare’s missing play, ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’. She had looked forward to having lunch with her brother all week. What
she hadn’t expected was sandwiches and a Coke, perched on the observation deck of the 86th floor of the Empire State Building, with her legs dangling into infinity. Somehow, the curator of the strange had been allowed to rent the entire floor for two hours, just for the pair of them, with part of the safety screens removed. “Like the view, Becca?’ asked Anthony, taking a swig of tea from his thermos flask cup. It always surprised him how the prince amongst beverages took on a well-stewed taste when kept in a flask for over six hours. A tincture of over-boiled milk, metal and plastic. Nice. “Well, you promised me some fresh air. That is certainly some view!” “The floor behind us has been the headquarters of several notable Masks since the building was finished in 1931, probably the most famous being Doc Caliban and his friends. The press of the time knew him as an adventurer and a philanthropist. The secret world called him, the Golden Avenger.” “You’re waffling, Anthony,” sighed his sister. “I asked for this dinner date for a specific reason. When are you going to tell Yory Keighley that he is most likely one of your mysterious seventeen pilgrims?” “Ah, you got me there. But they are not my seventeen pilgrims, per se, just a group of champions chosen by fate to protect the world from all manner of evils.” “I know that, you plank!” the girl snarled at him. For a 13-year-old, she did a fine selection of snarls. “There’s also your even older friend, Acer Via, who is still not talking to you after you – well, after you saved his life.” “He’s just being a meshugenah. ‘I was meant to die at the turn of the millennia’ – meshugenah. Acer always was a touch over-sensitive.” “I like him. He visits the House all the time… when he knows you aren’t going to be there.” “Does he? Well, that’s just rude.” “He also thinks part of his new destiny is as one of the seventeen chosen pilgrims.” Anthony nearly dropped his tea into the abyss. “Does he? How fascinating! That means if he’s right, I’ll have identified six of the pilgrims!” Then his face fell. “Oh. He’s not taking to me. I don’t suppose you can–” Rebecca scowled at him. “No I am not doing the Troughton Test on your friend! You call him and get him to talk to you…” She stopped her big sister/ little sister nagging, as she saw how sad her brother was suddenly looking. Well, half-brother at any rate. Same father, different mothers; which showed in the contrast between Anthony’s skeletal appearance, all tightly curled dark hair, his proud Jewish nose and those sticky-out ears, and Rebecca’s softer features, rounder face and long blonde hair.
“I’m a mess when it comes to personal relationships, aren’t I? Look at the other week when I screwed things up with Shi-Kane.” “Because she asked you to sleep with her and you declined? What a putz!” For a second or two, Anthony looked horrified at the words coming out of his 13-year-old sister’s mouth. Then he remembered she was technically over 200, thanks to her years as a spirit playing Time away in one of Hecate’s faeriegardens. The Leibowitz family tree was a wild thing sprouting thorns and dropping its seeds where it may. It would have given a Genealogist a cardiac arrest. “I’ll leave you to mend the bridge with Acer. By the sound of things, you’ve been rummaging about in my office amongst my private papers again, when I distinctly asked you to keep out of!” Rebecca had the decency to blush. “You left the door open.” “I did not! Did the Da Vinci woman break in for you?” “Her name is Isabella and I picked the lock myself… oh, buggery-shit!” Anthony smiled. Game, set and match to him, at least on this occasion. “So tell me, brother, who else do you think is part of these seventeen?” Anthony sighed, being dragged into this conversation whether he liked it or not. “There’s Keighley of course, Isabella da Vinci, who I will try to get to know better, and Shi-Kane our Seer friend. Then I’m fairly sure the big feller who runs Valhalla, the school for Halfling children, registers as one. His name is Saint Jude.” “School for Halfling children? That sounds interesting,” Rebecca spluttered, her mouth full of cucumber sandwich. “It’s hidden away in Alaska. Its intake is mainly Halflings, but they accept most kind of supernatural people. I went to a frozen hole in Dublin, Ireland when I was 17… missed out big time.” He started to gnaw at his thumbnail just at the mention of Azrael Fireheart’s Proprietary School for Young Gentlemen, where he had spent three of the most miserable years of his life. Deftly, Rebecca slapped his hand to make him stop eating himself. “So are you going to have a conversation with this Saint Jude?” “I’d rather not. He’s a renegade Angel in eternal exile. They can get rather nasty with their righteous rhetoric and all that smiting.” “You are such a bloody wuss! So who’s number five on your list?” she asked, already knowing the answer thanks to her burglary skills. “You have to understand, identifying these special people is a fine art. Before he disappeared, even papa had only identified four of them… shame the old rebel-rouser didn’t write their names down.” “Your fifth, brother…” “That one’s a bit complicated. I only recently discovered that this particular
gentleman died in 1905, along with a lot of his friends. There is even a tomb hidden somewhere beneath London celebrating their lives. He was the leader of a Victorian group of rebel-rousers known as, the Freakshow, a gentleman named, Captain Shark.” “So what are the rules when a pilgrim croaks it, before fulfilling his destiny?” “Like you did.” “Like I did.” “According to papa’s notes on all of this, nature picks another candidate to take their place… unless that first pilgrim finds some way to cheat death, of course. So if I am crass enough to include Acer Via on my list, I’m back to five again.” “Return to square one,” said Rebecca, swinging her legs 86 floors above street level. “Do not pass ‘Go’ and do not collect $200. This puzzle is turning out to be a bit of a bastard, isn’t it?” Anthony Leibowitz, the self-styled curator of the strange, nodded his head glumly. “So… Tell me more about this secret school hidden in Alaska… Valhalla, was it?” said Rebecca brightly, the germ of an idea coming to her as she finished off the last of the salmon-paste. Whilst her brother prattled on, as was his want, she wondered when would be the right time to announce that she had in fact discovered two more candidates for the seventeen hidden in their father’s diaries. A witch called Rosalyn Ashes and a man of mystery named, Mr Jupiter. But it was her new theory that was eating her away with excitement. Trying to get a look at the master of mysteries, Leonardo da Vinci’s original writings as he first predicted the rise of seventeen blessed souls who would gather to save the world in its hour of need, was paramount to her new idea. What if the sentence had been mistranslated from Leonardo’s reverse mirror writing, done in a mixture of contemporary Italian and Latin? Had that one tiny word, ‘the’, been added by accident, making ‘the seventeen’ a one-off cosmic event? Rebecca felt that the maestro had really been predicting that seventeen different souls could be gathered at any time to tackle every pantswetting dangerous event. She was just wondering when the polite moment would be to hijack Anthony’s pet project and bring his theories crashing down around his ears. *** October 3rd 2003 Of the five members of the original Gatecrashers, a particularly grubby little unit of corporate enforcers who had died and three years later came back to
life again, it was the android who seemed to find his new identity all the more sweeter than his first. It was only about two weeks ago that the android, once coded as Humanoid 1.0, began his second life. Adamite was sparing in the gym with something that looked like a JCB crossed with a Terminator, when two aerial figures chased each other overhead, with twin sonic booms, bringing the framed star photos rattling off the gym’s walls and cracking the windows. “John…” muttered Adamite, dropping his steel-plated sparing gloves to the mat and vaulting out of the training ring. There was a buzzing inside his head, as his hind-brain picked up familiar electronic signals. Bursting out into the New York street with the rest of the humanoid fighters, he was just in time to see a black streak being pursued by a white streak, tearing back from the other direction. “John Savage…” repeated the android, “same old John, making a big noise.” Just for a few seconds, Adamite caught the signals from Savage’s symbiont, the AI battle computer that the soldier carried in his body cavity, that Adamite, in what he regarded as his infant state, used to converse with about anything from quantum physics to football games. Adamite missed those conversations. Since he had come back to life… come back on-line… whatever was the best description, the android had reveled in life. Whereas the clunky redskinned version of what used to be called Humanoid 1.0 had had a mental age of an eight-year-old, the more human looking, black-skinned Adamite was well into his mature twenties. He estimated his IQ was already well above average and still rising. But the sudden possibility of seeing an old friend again excited him beyond belief. So the humanoid ran. His second and primary brains calculating what flight pattern Savage was going to take, he cut through the back alleys and across streets, shadowing the aerial chase almost exactly. Taking massive strides, he raced between traffic and miraculously through the panicking crowds, his figure almost a blur, until he reach the end of one road as it opened out to face the sea. As he skidded to a halt, the soles on his sneakers smoking due to the friction of running at top speed, and two human-shaped missiles shot over his head and plummeted into the grey waters of Hudson Bay. Like every other sightseer or commuter standing on the sidewalk, Adamite just gawped at the empty sea, willing someone, anyone to surface. But even inside his third brain, he felt as much as heard John Savage’s AI fizzle out and die beneath the cold sea. Right before his cybernetic eyes, his friend was lost again. Almost automatically, he kissed the silver crucifix he
wore around his neck and said a silent prayer to God to receive John Savage’s troubled soul. As the crowd’s gathered, the massive android became aware of petite young woman dressed in a long coat stood next to him. She had a shock of mousey hair with steampunk goggles pushed away from her face. Despite her age, her mature demeanor impressed Adamite. The way she held herself suggested confidence and power way beyond her years. Plus she was wearing neat earings shaped like little clocks. He was fairly certain he had seen this girl before, hanging around the Danger Room. “He’s gone again,” the android said out loud. “You reckon?” said the girl, quite friendly. “Do you know who that was?” “Jon Savage… The Sentinel,” he said without thinking. “I’ve no idea who his pursuer was. I sensed power and several cybernetic units involved, helping with navigation and the flight path. Stuff like that.” “You ‘sensed’?” mimicked the girl. She pulled one leather-gloved hand out of her coat pocket. There seemed to be a web of wires and sensors sewn haphazardly on the back of the glove. As she held up her hand towards the giant, the crude web matrix glowed neon blue. “Oooo, you’re a sneaky one,” she whistled, consulting several micro-screens embedded in her palm. Adamite reached out and tapped her shoulder with one massive finger. “So are you… Morrow, is it? You’re a Sidekick. I’ve seen you at the gym and the Danger Room. What’s going on with John? Why was he being chased?” “How do you know I’m just a Sidekick?” Morrow looked a little put out. “I could be a Mask in my own right, after the Fabulous 3rd, or whatever you want to call it, when the Solarnaut forced us all out into the light, whether we wanted to emerge or not.” “You’re a Sidekick. I can tell.” “Mutually busted,” said Morrow with a sulk. “And you’re a big, bad killer robot who came back from the dead. You don’t snitch on me and I won’t snitch on you, pal… deal?” He nodded and they bumped fists, rather selfconsciously. “I can’t process any readings from the Bay. Do you think John is dead… again?” “I’d go with your gut feeling that your friend is alright, even though things look grim right now. Let the clockwork run its course,” said the ever-wise Morrow, the Tick-Tock Girl. Then she stretched up on her tip-toes and pulled Adamite down towards her. Ever so gently, she kissed him on the cheek. It was the android’s first kiss. He wished he could have bottled it and saved it forever.
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Then his sharper-than-human eyes caught sight of one of her ornate, steampunk bracelets, as it clicked and whirred, marking the Time. In that one moment, all the cogs fell into place. “Catch you soon, Morrow. Tell Fate ‘hi’ when you see him next,” he said. Then he walked back towards the gym, leaving the very special Sidekick’s world slightly rocked. Tapping her glove’s interface, she drew up intel on the original Gatecrashers. There had been the killer, Lloyd Eastman. Then there was the soldier, John Savage. The artificial man, Adamite and their duplicitous sexy leader, Delta Chaney. But the fifth member of the Gatecrashers had been the most mysterious of all. The man with no past, Fate had been their deaf and dumb youngest member. Since the day they all came back from the dead, no one had seen sight or sound of this mood-manipulator. Morrow watch the massive guy go. Then she swiveled another bracelet on her left wrist and opened up a private Ultrawave channel. “Hey, hey, hey, lover. I have just met with your android buddy and he is totally cool. Any Eyes in the sky?” “One or two,” came back the slightly electronic reply. “I’ve put false alpha-waves out over the Bay area, but the Enemy is bound to send in some of her metaphysical Eye-spies. Come back home, Morrow. We’ve got the situation in hand here.” “Will do. See you in a tick!” She liked that one. It had become a game between her and her boyfriend on how many corny clockwork jokes she could introduce into every conversation. Walking along the seafront until she found a secluded place, she placed her wrists together, and all the cogs and clockwork devices beneath her coat began to whirr. In the blink of an eye, she had vanished… teleporting to the supersecret hero base beneath the Statue of Liberty, where lived the slightly eccentric genius, Thomas Thyme, a man who had a firm place in every version of the Looking-Glass Earth’s history. But Tom was her official guardian rather than her main squeeze. The identity of her boyfriend was another matter entirely. The clock was ticking. The final Act begun… And after this shocking chain of events, it was quite possible not everyone was going to get through the Black, White and Red Show alive. ...CONTINUED
IN BOOK 3
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GINNUNGAGAP: (“gaping abyss”, “yawning void”) is the primordial void mentioned in the Gylfaginning, the Eddiac text recording Norse cosmology
Now that the BLACK, WHITE & RED ALL OVER Trilogy is done, what next for the eclectic cast of characters who live on the Looking-Glass Earth? Quite a lot actually, as the first three books in th GINNUNGAGAP series are well on their way! Here’s an illustrated sample of Book #1: Love & Monsters.
in the begi One day, this could all be mine!
inning... Ginnungagap, the Yawning Gulf, is a slice of wonderful life containing the Looking-Glass Earth, a world much like our own, where everything you can ever imagine is possible. It’s the stuff you can’t imagine that creeps up behind you and bites your freaking head off!
LOVE & MONSTERS The Looking-Glass Earth turns again and another saga begins. Some old friends return and a lot of new ones raise their loud voices. This is a story of family and friends, brothers and sisters, and how when five teenagers with special abilities are flung together, something magical happens. But when one lonely girl is given the world, she begins to take her revenge on those people who slighted her down the years. It is an introduction to covert betrayal, careless Magik, and opens up the can of Venusian worms about what Earth’s alien refugees have been up to for the last 20 millennium.
T
he last time I visited that fabled observatory in Virginia which belonged to my late ancestor, Jack Beauregard Carter, was in response to an urgent call from a long-time friend. “I saw lights moving around through those yellowed glass walls last night!” came the breathless words over the phone. So I cancelled an appointment with my publishers and caught the train down to Madison the very next day. The domed observatory still stood, stoic and impenetrable, on the hill overlooking the ruins of the old colonial estate of the Belvedere Family, designed in a neo-classic Roman style but with more than a touch of otherworldliness to its decoration, its massive doors shut tight shut. Doctor _______ was waiting for me as I rattled up in a rented car, driving still being the sport of the Devil, as far as I was concerned. Greeting each other warmly, my friend showed me the chisel marks around the complex lock, made by person or persons unknown, as they had tried to break into the star observatory. “The fools still think my Uncle stored great riches in there before his last disappearance,” I told him. “The greatest treasure he carried was in his own heart.” Having known my Uncle in his youth, Doctor _______ heartily agreed with me.
World-Steppers
But it was as we examined the vast doors once again, that I noticed one was standing a hairs-breath ajar. Squeezing my fingers in the minute crack, I began to pull, and to my surprise, the door swung gracefully open on well-oiled hinges. Together we entered the domed observatory expecting to find the worse, as it appeared the would-be thieves might have been successful. Yet the priceless telescope, made from parts donated by the da Vinci family, was still intact, as were the row of lockers where my Uncle stored his expedition equipment. But as my friend trained his flashlight on the gaudily decorated walls, it was the words written in what looked like blood that sent a chill down my spine. ‘There are Worlds below us…’ the hastily writ legend said. For the life of me, I had no idea what that meant, until 10 years later when my Uncle Jack, still not looking a day over 35, walked into my office baring gifts. The Author, 1923 New York City.
Legacy Heroe
2nd - 16th March 1930
o n ly : fo r o n e n ig h t
Metaphisik
es
T
he strange case of the Dancing Candles had taken its toll on the magician, as using a portion of his real Magik often did. As he sat and swirled the ice cubes around his whisky glass, curtains open wide in that monolithic Brownstone on the Lower East side of Manhattan, Meskaline mused over the intricacies of the case. Hypnosis and the power of suggestion were the usual tools of his trade. Occasionally, he’d dazzle his audience and his foes alike with displays of telekinesis; the art of moving objects by the power of thought. But in this case, he had had to dig deep and use several of the hexes and cantrips taught to him by the old man who lived in the Himalayas. The hermit who went by the strange name of, Ebo Ngahlai. From her own studies and adventures, his wife, Princess Magda joined him, leaning over the high-back chair and kissing her husband tenderly. “People watching?” she asked softly, looking out into the dimly lit streets across the city, as Meskaline reached up and held her hand. “More like taking mental stock, my love. When I finally disabled that ancient book, through which the Invisible College was syphoning power from some mystic place, I received an amazing vision… It was as if I were looking down into an endless well, at a progression of worlds of various shapes and sizes that fell away below our own planet!” “Sounds fascinating,” his wife responded, but the magician gripped her hand all the harder. “Don’t humour me, Magda. I know your people have a strong legend about other worlds… other plains of existence which can be reached by a variety of fantastical ways! It stretches all the way back to the Vikings, I believe. To the explorations of Leif Erikson and his crew.” That was the night Princess Magda divulged more of her secrets to the great magician. About the Worlds Below, the true path of ancient Mages, and the role Magik played in it all. Truth be told, Meskaline was never quite the same again. ‘Charmed: A study of two centuries of Real Magik’, by Susanna Norrell 2003.
“I
’m hardly in this tale, a bit-player making up the numbers. One of the amalgamations of characters you once knew now re-written by Time,” said the super-model-thin Seer as she walked lazily along that distant shore. “But in my time out of the spotlight, I’ve made several harrowing observations. All the supposed adults hauled kicking and screaming into this Game are products of their own failed childhoods. Each angry face holds a secret story, of the things that went wrong in their lives and of the people who did them harm.” The sea breeze ruffled her short dark hair as she squinted into the faux-sun trying to break through low clouds and looked out to sea. To the space where things were going to change, for that was what a Seer always saw… constant gut-churning change. “For the record, my name is Sung-Hun Sun, and in the greater scheme of things, I am a Harlequin. We are by nature the children of chaotic change, the Jokers in the pack, the Hanging Man in the Major Arcana of cards. These kids, Nocturne and the five Genesis brats, think they’ve got it bad… Nothing beats you up like being a Harlequin ¬– believe me!” The Gap Worlds according to Sung-Hu Sun
...Echo Beach
Hunting Dragons
“I
gnore her, she lies,” Elizabeth Dusk sighed, looking out over Victorian London, the irony of this all meta-fiction referencing not escaping her warped sense of humour. “Children need a firm hand on their shoulder, whether it’s learning basic arithmetic, or being taught how to fire a rifle.” Under the city’s smoke-filled sky, the usually spotless nanny was looking a touch ruffled. Her dress was torn in numerous places, several locks of raven hair had dropped in long bangs over her face and there was blood on her lace-up boots and the hem of her skirt. Watching over her brood, her children of choice, she wiped her enemies’ brains from the tungsten steel tip of her infamous umbrella with a handkerchief, then, pulling a disgusted face, she dropped the soiled item into the gutter. “This is where the origins of this world’s Übermensch begin,” she whispered hoarsely into the breeze, with all its fetid, poisonous stench. “Cities are the meltingpots of industrial growth, these vast proving grounds for the human race… and all their slightly different offspring. Genetic soup for the soul.” She flipped open her umbrella as the dark clouds began to gather over Europe. Pre-war tension and poverty mixed with this age’s special people… the Wonders. “And I will be there to help these special children as the centuries roll past. Help them with a kindness and a firm hand. It’s what I was born to do…” Then in a flash of lightning that illuminated the whole of Whitechapel, Elizabeth Dusk was gone… until her special talents were needed again. Lady in Black – The Celestial Chronicles: 1888
Echo from another story… <…the Chronal topography is severely bruised… Fractures in the current Timeline are healing, but all Paradigm Shifts are frozen until further notice.> The ether went quiet for the longest of moments, as Tourists scattered up and down Known History listened intently to their crystal head-sets… but not even the background static was getting through. <Tesseract Bunkers #13, #212 and #79 are still missing. All other life-rafts from the previous Time Line have been recovered… but there are strangers signing in…> the haunted voice of reason eventually continued. <People I don’t know… We seem to have suffered a Grade 13 Cascade, people… you might not be the person you were 24 nano-seconds ago.> <Trust no one, especially yourself… The Extinction Level Event coded: Rapture has skewed across numerous parallel worlds, reducing the Red Skies effect to a hundred mystic storms.> < The Kraken is rising… but there’s something stuck inside his head.> <The Ashvanti Horde has been released. What the hell that even means, I have no idea.> <Sunnybrook Farm… requesting assistance…> <I can’t see… I seem to have gone blind…>
Black Bullet “Is he dead?” someone dared to ask as the children of the Eternal dragged their father’s bleeding body through the catacombs beneath the garden. Black roots brushed against their faces, as they pushed their way through the earth like frightened animals. Several of the older teenagers who hadn’t run when the fighting had started, moved along ahead, guns at the ready, to check the way was still safe. “No, I’m not,” muttered the corpse, his mouth paralyzed on the left hand side, like a stroke victim. “I’m not dead… yet. Who fired the shot? Who did this to me?” There was a hole in the immortal’s head where a hand-carved bullet made from a black ammonite fossil had been shot. Presumably, the projectile was still lodged inside his brain. Strangely, the bloody madness that had plagued him since his transformation seemed to have temporarily lifted. He was a big man, this shaker of worlds, even by his own definition. Almost inhuman in his size, still wrapped in the pale Arabian robes that he tended to favour, his cyclopean glass visor had slipped from his face and hung from its restraints like forgotten flight goggles, as the thick black blood still pumped from his head wound. Time seemed to have slipped into slow motion as he blinked against its sluggish flow, clearing the blood from his eyes. “I ask again… who fired the shot?” he slurred. Out of the sea of frightened faces, the girl with the lightning scars radiating from her eyes loomed forward. “We don’t know, father,” said Nocturne. “Probably one of the Gatecrashers.” The Eternal sighed and leaned back, as his children continued to drag him through the maze of underground tunnels on a makeshift stretcher. Then he laughed, raggedly. “Fate thumbs its nose at me once again… I killed those Gatecrasher bastards once and some force beyond our understanding brings them back to kill me!” The world of the black, white and red all over was complicated like that. The Eternal Mr Smith found himself giggling uncontrollably, even as his head felt that it was going to explode. “Ngahlai… Bring the sorcerer, Ebo Ngahlai to me…” he whispered hoarsely. “The little shit’s gone, father,” Nocturne said. Of all the Eternal’s many children crammed into that tunnel, only she had the guts to tell him the truth. “I think he might have stolen the Crying Stone when the fighting started. I never did trust him.” “We went against the tide…” her father babbled. “Using Magik in an Age of
Science to confront all my enemies… and it so nearly worked…” He had first called himself, Mr Smith, as a joke, as if he represented the common man. Only a man of his impossible lifespan could appreciate the ebb and flow of the two opposed forces of the Universe. That in an Age of Magic, Science was a whipped lamb, to slowly emerge through the study of alchemy until it blossomed into a new Age of Science, where what pitiful dregs of Magik were left in the world often refused to work. Smith’s spiritual advisor, the diminutive Gnome, Ebo Ngahlai had warned him that the next toss of the coin when Magik usurped Science was destined to be a violent affair. So the time had seemed right to take out all opposition in his rise to Ascendancy, changing his name to that of the Kraken. Basically, he had gambled and lost. Once again, fragmented memories tore through his mind as his children strove to get him to a place of safety. He began to speak in tongues long dead and became agitated, to the point that Nocturne and some of the others had to tie him to the sled. “We need to staunch the bleeding,” one of the younger boys insisted. “If we stop, he may die,” was all Nocturne would say, tight lipped. “Anyone with any medical skills?” she shouted as loud as she dared down the length of the tunnel. Only silence came back. “But I th-thought...?” stammered one of the fashion girls, all diamond patterns in the latest Harlequin style. “That he was immortal? Think again,” snapped Nocturne, those dark eyes giving off a critzzz of electricity that made the others shrink away. She was a creature of conflict, inheriting her swift temper and keen sexual drive from him. Yet there was something dark curled up inside that bright, sexy wrapper. Why she had stepped up and taken charge, she didn’t know. It just seemed the right thing to no. But now her father, her ever-present rock, might be dying. “Please don’t die,” she chanted under her breath. “Please don’t die,” said the Daddy’s girl. Once-upon-a-millennia their father had skipped from body to body like some mundane changing clothes. That was before the Djinn, his eternal opposite number, had tried to eat one of his corpsicles and destroyed the linkbetween-forms. If the Eternal died there in that ancient tunnel, there would be no resurrection inside a fresh body. Those days were long gone. In times like this... times when the madness lifted like a fog, he could see backwards in Time, as well as forwards. He would remember sitting alone before a blazing fire, or on the shore of a dark lake, or beneath endless stars out in the desert, feeling at peace with his many lives… quietly trying to
reconnect with what was Real and what past for Fantasy. Then the fog would roll back in and he would shake his head, wondering why he had come to this place. Loading his guns, sharpening his swords, honing his mental Chi, he would walk back to what passed for civilization, back to his immortal calling of saving the World. Business as usual. This was before his mind was poisoned by the ancient Djinn and it suddenly made more sense to conquer the Looking-Glass Earth rather than protect it. 1943 had been a sublime year. Yet in times of metal clarity like this, he would also scratch his mark on the yardstick of Time. Piss in the corner of the world to mark his territory. Look for his name in the small print of the universe. For he was the Original Man, the very first humanoid created by following a stolen Redprint… created by forgotten gods as a way to pass the time. Back then he had been the one and only, Issak Ut Kaijaig…He who cannot die. “Is the alien here?” he whispered again from his madness. “Or has he deserted me too?” Nocturne stiffened as the raggedy crew bumped into each other and the tunnel walls, grinding to a halt once again. She showed her teeth. It wasn’t a smile. “Leave that freak out of this, father,” she growled, not wanting to play that card, not wanting to go down that path. “If Magik has deserted me, I need the alien!” Smith snapped back. “I’m here,” said a calm voice from the back of the group. A figure huddled in black military fatigues had seemingly appeared from nowhere. As best they could, the children of the Eternal parted to let the pariah through. “I’m always here, when you need me, old friend,” grated the cowled figure, placing one bony hand on Smith’s arm. “I don’t like this,” Nocturne whispered, her voice tight with emotion. “You’re not even human!” “You don’t have to,” said the alien, as he unwound a length of catheter tubing from inside his tunic. Before anyone could stop him, he jabbed one end with a needle attached into the Eternal’s left forearm. Rolling up his own sleeve, he revealed a permanent shunt already present in his right arm and plugged in the other end of the tubing. “And if we are delving into the bottomless pit of semantics, your father isn’t human too.” Then he looked the troubled girl right in the eye and she felt as if he were weighing her very soul. “And neither are you, my dear,” he neatly finished that argument with.
So the thick black blood began to flow from his smoke-grey form into the dying body of the Eternal Mr Smith. The alien-factor was a long shot. It might kill or cure him, but whichever way, it was going to hurt like hell. As the alien’s blood burned into Smith’s veins, his body suddenly spasmed and he let out one silent scream, before collapsing back onto the sled. Ozymandias, one of but a handful of full-blood Wish-Hunters that had crawled their way out of the depths of Ginnungagap across a wide span of history, allowed the hood to fall away from his face. It was as if he had been carved from stone, a face both angular, yet alive with black veins. His eyes were as red as human blood and just as sad in many ways, the facetted, crystalline strands that passed for hair, piled up in a knot on top of his head. “It is done,” he muttered, his voice as dry as dust as he detached the tubing. “The rest is up to your father’s unique biology.” But whatever the prognosis, as the offspring of the Eternal dragged their father deeper into the catacombs, they knew he would never be the same again. Using the alien-factor was a whole new game-changer.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s it for now!
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