Right now, Marty’s chosen source of funds was a waitress walking home from some place in Deale. She would have tip money. Plus, waitresses were often used to being robbed. They did not put up much of a fight, especially when Marty waved his pistol at them. Marty loved his pistol. The girl looked pretty good in her short pink dress, but Marty considered himself a professional: he was after the money, not any fringe benefits.
‘I-I only have a couple of bucks,’ the girl whimpered as he waved his revolver under her nose. ‘It’s been a bad day. Honest, I don’t–’
‘Don’t give me that,’ Marty said. ‘You give me what you’ve got or–’
A hand landed on Marty’s back and, before he could really take in what was happening, darkness swallowed him. The night was dark, sure, but this was something else. This was a darkness he had been in before, but somehow worse. This was… ‘Noooo!’ he wailed, sinking to his knees. ‘You can’t be back! No! You can’t be! Noooo!’
The shadows shrank away from Marty Koslowski and Andrea looked down at him as he continued to shriek and wail. She had transported him up onto an apartment block across the street from the alley she had found him in for a chat, but it looked like it would be a while before he was competent to listen.
At a sound from behind her, she turned and saw Skadi loping across the rooftops. The archer came to a stop beside her and looked down at Marty. ‘He doesn’t seem pleased to see you,’ Skadi observed. ‘I heard you were back in town, wanted to see it for myself. This place has been getting hard to handle, even with Astraea working it.’
Andrea gave a shrug. ‘Well, I’m back and, if I do say so myself, better than ever.’
‘I like the new hair.’ There was a grin in Skadi’s voice.
Reaching back, Andrea pulled one of the shoulder-length pigtails around so that she could look at it. ‘I considered cutting it back, but I think I’m going to keep it. Gives me more of gothic, scary look.’
‘He certainly seems to think so.’
‘Oh, Marty hasn’t even seen me yet. Have you, Marty?’
Marty looked up then, his eyes finding Andrea. ‘You can’t be back,’ he said.
Andrea leaned down, locking her eyes on his. ‘But I am, and you’re going to tell everybody just how bad it’ll be for them if they don’t start behaving as though I am.’
Marty let out a whimper as his vision seemed to narrow until his whole world was nothing but Andrea’s jet-black eyes. He let out a scream, which echoed through the streets of Churchton, and then he scrabbled away from Andrea, desperately trying to get away. It took most of her enhanced strength holding onto the collar of his jacket to stop him running off the edge of the roof.
‘Yeah,’ Andrea said, grinning at Skadi, ‘Twilight is back.’
Epilogue
New Millennium City, MD, 5th December 2016.
Smoke poured from the left-side engine of the aircraft and the one on the right was sputtering as though it might give up at any time. Cygnus flew in from the starboard side and did one loop around it to see what she was dealing with.
Denny had noticed the aircraft squawking an emergency code and begun listening in on the surface-to-air radio traffic. The plane was on a routine flight between London and New Millennium City. It was reporting the loss of one engine and loss of pressure in the second which was, to say the least, unusual. The cause of the failures was something for someone else to deal with, however. Right now, the problem was that the aircraft was carrying around three hundred passengers and was going to have to make an emergency landing on just one partially operational engine.
There was a noise like a car backfiring and smoke began pouring out of the right-hand engine. Make that no engines. Cygnus slid in under the two-hundred-ton glider, rose up until she had her back under the fuselage between the wings, and lifted.
‘Denny, I need to talk to the pilots,’ she said through gritted teeth. She was having to increase her strength with cosmic energy, and that took effort. She could handle it for a while, but they were going to get exactly one try to get the plane on the ground.
‘Uh, this is Captain Hawker aboard flight UK seven two six. Over.’ The voice sounded like it belonged to a stereotype of a pilot, rich and resonant, but also as if that pilot had just discovered that all those simulator hours were not enough when things really did go horribly wrong.
‘Captain, this is Cygnus. I’m–’
‘I know who you are, Cygnus. Are you why we seem to be holding altitude without power? Over.’
‘Yeah, I’m under your fuselage right now and I can only keep this up for a limited amount of time, so listen up. I need you to steer. We’re heading straight for Starblaze, so tell them to clear a runway. Call out if I’m going too fast or slow. And if this takes longer than about twenty minutes, both of us are going to be in a lot of trouble. Over.’
‘Understood, Cygnus. We’ve a landing pattern set already, and the emergency vehicles will be waiting. Starting approach in five minutes. Hawker out.’
‘Great,’ Cygnus muttered. ‘I can do this. No problem. Just carry a bust-up passenger aircraft down and hope we don’t screw this up too–’
‘Hi there!’ a bright-sounding voice said from just below Cygnus. ‘I don’t suppose I could be of some help.’
Kicking herself for not paying attention to her radar, Cygnus looked down and blinked to be sure she was not imagining it. Flying along beside her was a woman in a long-sleeved leotard-like outfit with a cleavage window and very high hips. It was mostly blue with white stars scattered over it, but the right shoulder had red-and-white stripes and the sleeves were a swirl of red, white, and blue. Very patriotic. Her blonde hair was cut into a bob and was fluttering in the wind, and her eyes were blue. She was beautiful, no question about it, but she was a flying Ultra and Cygnus had never seen her before.
‘I don’t know,’ Cygnus said after a second. ‘Can you help me?’
‘Well, maybe I could take some of the weight…’
‘Right. Sure. Go up toward the nose. Make sure you’re not in the way of the landing gear.’
The blonde snapped off a jaunty salute and powered ahead, settling into position behind the wheel hatch before pushing up. Whoever she was, she was certainly strong. And her over-the-knee boots were red, white, and blue too.
‘Captain Hawker, this is Cygnus. You just got an extra engine from somewhere. I think our chances of pulling this off just went up. Cygnus out.’
~~~
Cygnus stood on the concrete of runway 1L with her hands on her knees and watched passengers being disembarked via rubber slides. Astraea was over by one of them with the paramedics, making sure no one was injured, but the landing had been pretty perfect, considering, and everyone seemed to be okay.
Turning her head, Cygnus saw the blonde woman striding over. She did not look in the least bit tired and there was a big grin on her face. Cygnus waited for her to get closer before speaking. ‘Thanks for the assist. I think I’d have managed without, but you made that a lot easier and safer.’
‘Oh, it was my duty. Not too bad for my first time out. And working with you… I’m a bit of a fan.’
‘Okay. If you don’t mind me asking, who are you?’
The grin grew brighter. ‘I’m Miss Liberty. I’m the new American national hero!’
###
About the Author
I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.
Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s serie
s Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn.
I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. I wrote science fiction when I was playing Traveller. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes. I still love the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.
Recently I took the big step of quitting my day job and taking up full-time writing. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, J.D. Robb, and Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.
For More Information
Take a look at the Witches and Ray-guns blog: http://witchesandrayguns.wordpress.com
Links to book vendors and other information can be found there, along with a view on what I’m up to and when it might happen.
Other Books by this Author
The Thaumatology Series
Thaumatology 101
Demon’s Moon
Legacy
Dragon’s Blood
Disturbia
Hammer of Witches
Eagle’s Shadow
Ancient
Dragonfall
The Other Side of Hell
For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll
Vengeance
Anthologies in the Thaumatology Universe
Tales from High Towers’ Study
Tales from the Dubh Linn
The Aneka Jansen Books
Steel Beneath The Skin
The Cold Steel Mind
Steel Heart
The Winter War
The Greatest Heights of Honour
The Lowest Depths of Shame
Hope
The Ultrahuman Books
Ugly
Shadows
Hunting Mink
Frostburn
Guardian
True Dark
Liberty – coming soon
The Unobtainium Books
Kate on a Hot Tin Roof
The Reality Hack Books
Reality Hack
The Fox Meridian Books
Fox Hunt
Inescapable
DeathWeb
Criminal Minds
Emergence
The Ghost in the Doll
Eden Burning
Dominance
The Princeps Venator Books
Hunter’s Kiss
Be My Valentine
The Gunwitch Books
Gunwitch: Rebirth
The Children of Zanar Series
The Zanari Inheritance
The Misfits Series
Misfit Magic
Misfit Witchcraft
The Sondra Blake Series
The Vanity Case
The Shil the Huntress Books
The Eyes of the Huntress
The Twilight Empress Trilogy
The Iron Princess
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One: Chinese Whispers
Part Two: The Darker Side of Light
Part Three: The Fire Giant
Part Four: Midnight in the Soul
Part Five: Politico
Part Six: Just Click Your Heels Together
Epilogue
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One: Chinese Whispers
Part Two: The Darker Side of Light
Part Three: The Fire Giant
Part Four: Midnight in the Soul
Part Five: Politico
Part Six: Just Click Your Heels Together
Epilogue
True Dark Page 33