by Gary Jonas
“And you let him live?”
“That’s not all,” Esther said, disgusted.
When we climbed into the car, several people started toward us as if to tell us we couldn’t leave, but I had a sword in my hand and I’m guessing they’d seen Kelly behead the two dead warriors. The people changed their minds about getting involved and backed off. I knew they’d give my license plate number to the police, but I wasn’t too worried about it. I’d get in touch with O’Malley before then and go down to the station to sort things out.
Kelly tossed me the keys.
“You have something more to tell me, Kelly?” I asked as I started the car. I was pleased that the engine fired right up.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” I said as I backed down off the curb. I could see antifreeze on the sidewalk, but it appeared to be a minor leak. I felt sure we could make it to the police station.
“Tell him,” Esther said.
“Tell me what?” I asked.
Kelly shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”
“What?”
Esther fumed. “She has a date with Brand on Friday.”
“Excuse me? The son of a bitch tried to kill us and you’re going to go out with him?”
Kelly shot Esther a look that said tattletale. “He’s cute,” she said.
“Oh, boy,” I said. “Don’t tell O’Malley until after we’ve cleared all this shit up.”
By the time the Fourth of July rolled around, my injuries had mostly healed. My shoulder still gave me the occasional twinge, but Kelly had been working on it after training at her new dojo. She insisted that I train every damn day. My heart just wasn’t in it.
Sometimes Brand was there to be my sparring partner. I know Kelly told him to take it easy on me, and to his credit, he listened to her. He was incredibly fast, but he always pulled his punches. In some ways, I wished he wouldn’t.
We sat at the picnic table in O’Malley’s backyard, eating hamburgers, hot dogs, potato chips, and assorted goodies. We washed it all down with ice-cold beer.
O’Malley watched Kelly and Brand laughing and holding hands. He looked disappointed, but he’d taken it well and was dating a woman named Donna who worked in the evidence room.
As for me, I didn’t have a new office yet, but I did find an apartment. Esther went shopping for decorations with me. She insisted that it should feel like home.
I wasn’t sure any place would ever feel like home, but I went through the motions of life anyway.
Every night in my dreams, I tried to save Naomi, but she’d still leap onto that sword and I’d hold her as her life bled out. For weeks I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to get over it, but last night things hit a turning point. I didn’t wake up crying when she died. Last night, we rode down the Acheron, and she gave me a look filled with love and forgiveness. She kissed me and faded away like a forgotten memory.
When the people you love die, they leave an emptiness inside you that can never be filled. You carry that emptiness with you forever. The trick is to fill the rest of your life with good things. I looked around at my friends. They were laughing and smiling, and I knew they were there for me. I figured that was a damn good start.
THE END
Check out the next book in the Jonathan Shade Novel series!
ACHERON HIGHWAY
(A Jonathan Shade Novel)
Gary Jonas
CHAPTER ONE
You ever have one of those days where dead people just won’t leave you alone? Well, I’d been having one of those months, but it didn’t get too crazy until Miranda Hammond walked into my life. Picture this: it’s a cool Tuesday morning in early December. Denver in late autumn wasn’t too bad this year. We had more mild days than arctic freezes and the temperature hovered in the high thirties. I could deal with it, but I had the car heater going.
I pulled into my apartment parking lot and noticed a beautiful blonde leaning against the wall by my door. Esther stood beside her for a moment, but saw me and popped into my passenger seat. I should probably mention that Esther is a ghost. As always, she wore her short flapper dress. She was a secretary who died back in 1929. For many years, she couldn’t get farther than fifteen feet from her typewriter, but six months ago, the Underwood shattered and we kept most of the remains. She can teleport to any of those pieces whenever she likes. She loves the new mobility.
“Hi, Jonathan. I think the Sheba is here for you.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“If it’s a blind date, you got lucky.”
“No date,” I said. “How long has she been here?”
“Ten minutes tops.”
“Is she alive?”
Esther frowned. “It didn’t occur to me to check.”
“Well, let’s see what’s cooking.”
Esther popped back to the woman and walked through her. Esther tapped her chest and gave me a thumbs-down.
Great. Just what I needed. Another dead person. What can I tell you? My life is complicated. I stepped out of the Firebird, closed the door, and shivered as the wind cut into me. Too bad I couldn’t carry the heater with me.
As I approached the door, the woman turned toward me.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Are you Jonathan Shade?”
“According to my driver’s license,” I said.
Her voice was silky smooth and, while at first glance, I’d have placed her in her early thirties, when I looked into her eyes, I adjusted the number closer to forty. A well-preserved forty, but her eyes held wisdom. She wore black slacks and a red blouse buttoned all the way to the top. She didn’t seem to notice the cold, but being dead, she wouldn’t. She stepped closer.
“My name is Miranda Hammond, and I want to hire you.”
“Is this about Sharon?” I asked.
She gave me a confused look. “What makes you think that?”
“I’m psychic,” I lied.
She gave me the I was born at night, but not last night look. “Could have fooled me.”
“Come on. You want to hire me to take you to a woman named Sharon. Been there, done that, sold the T-shirt on eBay. I’ll send you a bill.”
She placed a hand on my chest. “I don’t know anyone named Sharon.”
“You may know her by another name.” I moved past her to unlock my door. “The spirits play tricks sometimes.”
She shook her head. “May I come inside? I really need to talk to you.”
“Sorry. I’m not taking on any new clients at this time.”
“Mr. Shade, I need your help. I was told you were my best shot at handling my little problem.”
I grabbed her forearm, turned it, and placed the pads of my middle and ring fingers on her wrist. As Esther had indicated, Miranda did not have a pulse.
“Pretty little crazy dead girl, go back to your grave.”
“I’m not dead. Really.”
“Pretty little crazy undead girl, go back to your grave.”
I opened the door, entered my apartment, and closed the door behind me. As I expected, the woman knocked.
“Is she a vampire?” Esther asked.
“I don’t believe in vampires.”
The woman kept knocking. “Please open the door, Mr. Shade!”
Esther frowned. “She was trying to get an invitation to come inside.”
“You’ve been around for more than a century. Have you ever seen a vampire?”
“I spent most of my time in a filthy storage closet. It’s not like I was out enjoying the night life.”
“It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, so even if vampires existed, she wouldn’t be out right now. Or maybe she’d be all sparkly.”
Miranda persisted with the knocking.
I sighed, turned around, and opened the door.
Miranda stood there, fist raised to knock again. “Oh,” she said.
“Are you a vampire?” I asked.
She blinked. “No.”
“A
vampire wouldn’t admit to being a vampire,” Esther said.
“Right,” I said. “At least you aren’t covered in glitter.” Leaving the door open, I turned, walked over to the sofa, and sat down.
Miranda hesitated then entered my apartment. “I’m guessing it’s all right for me to come inside.”
“Whatever. Shut the door. This place costs a fortune to heat.”
She closed the door.
Esther moved in front of Miranda and stared at her mouth. I suspect she was trying to see if Miranda had elongated incisors. Since Miranda couldn’t see Esther, she walked right through her and stood before me.
“Spill,” I said.
Miranda took a moment to look around the apartment. “You have no furniture,” she said.
“I have a sofa.”
She was right, though. Aside from the sofa, I didn’t have any furniture in the living room. My old condo and my office had been destroyed, and while I rented an apartment, I hadn’t bothered to furnish it beyond the sofa and a few essentials. Esther kept trying to get me to replace everything, but I felt more dead than Miranda. The decorations I let her talk me into buying still resided in bags in the closet.
“I don’t trust her,” Esther said. Esther didn’t trust anyone.
Miranda took a deep breath and let it out slowly. That made her blouse expand in interesting ways, but I reminded myself she was dead. Look in her eyes.
“Let’s hear it,” I said.
“I don’t know who I can turn to, and you came very highly recommended.”
“By whom?”
“Naomi Miller.”
I felt a knife in my heart. “Naomi’s dead,” I said.
“I heard. I’m sorry. I work at DGI Engineering.”
The fact that she added the word Engineering told me she didn’t realize that DGI stood for Dragon Gate Industries or that the thirteenth floor housed a bunch of wizards. Naomi had worked there as a wizard. Yes, a real wizard.
“Naomi and I used to go to Starbucks every morning before work,” Miranda said. “One day over lattes, she told me that if I ever had a problem—a problem that seemed too weird for normal people—that I should look you up. She said you handle strange cases all the time and nobody could do it better. I don’t know who else I can talk to about this.”
“Let me guess. You died and now you’re back and it’s freaking you out.”
“I’m not dead, Mr. Shade.”
“Sorry, Miranda, but when your heart stops beating, that’s the textbook definition of dead.”
“Denial much?” Esther said.
“A year ago, I had a problem with a guy I dated. He worked on a different floor and he seemed nice, but he got really attached to me really fast. I tried to break it off with him, but he wouldn’t let go.”
“Your very own stalker. How nice for you.”
“He left me twenty messages a day. I changed my number and had two terrific days without him bothering me.”
“Then he got the new number, of course.”
“That’s right. And he told me that he would win my heart one way or another.”
“By leaving you twenty messages a day. That always works.”
“A month ago, I read a book about stalkers and I finally realized the smart thing to do was to get a second phone, but I kept the original phone too. That way I could have my friends and family call my new number, but stalker boy could leave me all the messages he wanted. As long as the phone was live, he wouldn’t know I’d switched numbers and eventually he’d give up.”
“That’s usually effective as long as you’ve told the guy you’re not interested.”
“I told him that time and again. Of course, now I know I should have said it once and then ignored him from then on.”
“That’s all well and good, but I don’t do domestics. You should—”
“Let me finish, Mr. Shade.”
I shrugged and motioned for her to continue.
“He came down to my office. He told me that if he couldn’t win my heart, he’d have to steal it.” As she spoke, she unbuttoned her blouse. She slowly opened it enough to reveal an incision in her chest.
“What the hell?” I said.
“He stole my heart, Mr. Shade. I want you to find him and steal it back.”
Buy Acheron Highway, available in all ebook formats on Amazon.com, Smashwords.com, BN.com and www.skywarriorbooks.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
They say that truth is stranger than fiction.
Some of the following is true. For example, Gary Jonas writes fantasy novels such as Modern Sorcery and One-Way Ticket to Midnight. Well, that’s sort of true. The truth is that he’s already written those, but he will write more unless he gets too bored. But we’ll call that an example of true. Gary’s wife is Jessica Alba. Sadly, this is false. Jessica Alba won’t return his calls, but that’s the way it goes, and no, the restraining order doesn’t prevent him from going to California.
Gary is an author for Sky Warrior Books. This is also true. In our quest for world domination, we know that having someone like Gary at our side during a zombie apocalypse is pretty useful. We can at least throw him in front of the zombie hordes while we run away screaming.
It's not that we don't appreciate our authors. We just know our limitations.
Gary, however, has added a number of true and false questions for us to puzzle over. Here are three; can you pick out the false one?
1. Gary’s stepmother hired a stranger to shoot off her foot with a shotgun.
2. Gary dreams of creating a religion so he won’t have to pay taxes and, in spite of the fact that he writes fantasy, people will believe him and pay him lots of money.
3. Gary dressed in drag and appeared on stage in front of a large audience telling a popular fantasy author that he wanted the author to lick his beaver, and raised his skirt to reveal a stuffed beaver hanging there ready for action.
Which is false? None of them. Which is why Gary is part of the Evil Overlord plan and a valued minion. His other works include the upcoming Quick Shots, a collection of short stories and Modern Sorcery, an urban fantasy series. Check out his website HERE.
Oh, and don't tell him about the zombie hordes.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Artist Mitchell Davidson Bentley spent the last 20 years moving physically from place to place and artistically from traditional oils to cyber compositions. Trained in the traditional medium of oil by his mother, and inspired by his grandfather’s love of science fiction, Bentley began his career as a full-time science fiction artist in 1989 from his home base in Tulsa. While actively involved in the science fiction art world, Bentley also moved from Tulsa to Austin to Central Pennsylvania where his search for knowledge earned him bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Penn State University. Over the same period of time, Bentley shifted from the more traditional oil painting to airbrushed acrylics, and since 2004 has been working exclusively in electronic media.
As art director of Atomic Fly Studios, Bentley produces cover art, marketing materials and Web sites while he continues to produce quality 2D artwork marketed through the AFS Web site and at science fiction conventions across the United States.
Bentley has lectured at universities, worked in film, edited publications and served as Artist Guest of Honor at more than a dozen science fiction conventions. He has also earned 35 awards, is a lifetime member of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists, and is serving as President. Visit his website at http://www.atomicflystudios.com/
Books Published by Sky Warrior Books
Purchase them through online resellers and better independent bookstores everywhere. Visit us at www.skywarriorbooks.com for news and upcoming books and promotions.
Alma Alexander
2012: Midnight at Spanish Gardens (E-book, Trade Paperback)
Embers of Heaven (E-book, Trade Paperback)
S. A. Bolich
Firedancer (E-book, Trade Paperback)
Windrider (
E-Book, Trade Paperback)
M. H. Bonham
Prophecy of Swords (E-book)