by Lynda Aicher
Knowing sleep would not return, he slouched across his small illegal loft to the bank of computers humming like a beehive in the mellow quiet. A folding table against the wall offered a makeshift kitchenette in the form of an expensive coffee maker and cheap microwave.
“Hello, darlings.” He slid into his worn chair that shrieked like a banshee if he leaned too far back and flipped on the coffee maker. Despite the audible protests of the seat’s bearings, it fit him like a comfortable pair of jeans.
His three monitors awakened at the sound of his voice, the machines activating their program sequences. He decided to run through CCTV clips captured by his patch into its outmoded system first. A few he saved for later examination—most he discarded. His coffee maker dispensed fresh, strong brew into a plain black ceramic cup as a new string of grainy images began its run. Halfway through he stopped the video stream and restarted it, not certain of what he’d seen. It took three repeated viewings, at slower speeds and narrowly focused pixilation, to confirm with his eyes what his brain did not believe. He replayed it again, coffee cooling with fragrant accusation.
A figure in dark clothes strode down a street in what was not quite the vice district, flickering in the vivid dancing lights of enticements. His or her gait was one of purpose, belied by a hint of absentmindedness only the truly unconcerned could manage. She, he could see now—walked against the crowd, skirting revelers and the human race as a whole. He leaned closer.
She passed an alley and was obviously spooked by what she sensed there, because she inexplicably disappeared.
Quickly, without conscious volition, he re-engaged the link to this particular feed and searched nearby cameras for video from different angles. He was annoyed to find facial-recognition programs could not gather sufficient info to identify the walker.
Finally he found her again, beneath the overhang on a far corner. For a fleeting instant she looked nearly full on into the camera, a sardonic smile twitching the corners of her mouth. He took a snapshot and followed her progress, camera to camera, until she disappeared into the Burnout Zone, where no satellite feed would ever reach again. He exhaled, printed the shot and stuffed his coffee into the microwave. While he waited for it to reheat, he cleared a space on his corkboard and hung the photo among the wild detritus of false hopes and starts. When the microwave dinged he retrieved his coffee and sat back to consider the odd light in her eyes while his mind raced with possibilities.
Had he actually found one? One of the angels or demons who had begun walking the earth during the war? Or was she one of the others, still human, yet more? Demi-human, he called them, for lack of a better term. Part human, part…something else, biding their time until the Horsemen rode. Signs of the approaching apocalypse had been lining up for years, but hardly anyone was paying attention.
He was inclined to believe the latter. There was something ancient in her eyes, a weary but determined set to her closed-off face. He wore the same expression whenever he looked in a mirror.
The Burnout Zone. No one ever went there that didn’t have to. The old bridge was little more than a heap of rubble, its tunnels shelter for a black market of shady business dealings and their dealers, a fringe society of the hopeless and not-entirely-there. He’d gone there once or twice, but it was not an experience he cared to repeat. He frequented his own brand of underground establishments with their unique collection of conspiracy theorists, where the food was better and hygiene more of a priority. Nor had the contents of his pockets ever wandered off in pursuit of their own adventures.
One of his other monitors flashed a black-and-red warning at him, buzzing a computer version of a genteel cough to attract his attention. He spun his chair and tapped a few keys to access the new information.
This one wasn’t from one of his regular channels, rather a back channel he’d rarely seen triggered. It was, in fact, a new bounty activated by someone handled as The Agent.
One guess who the target was.
Once again his coffee was left to cool, abandoned, as his chair spun gently in place.
Declan was perfectly accustomed to being ignored. It tended to be a point of pride in his business. The organizations from which he skimmed information didn’t even know they should be looking for him, this anonymous cortex phantom who plucked innocuous facts and tidbits from their stores the way the tooth fairy plucked teeth from beneath pillows without the owner ever waking up.
Now, however, it proved to be something of a problem.
“Excuse me? Sir? Do you know where I can find this woman?” A rack of metal necklaces with homespun pendants swayed as yet another dreg skirted his outstretched arm. “I mean, ma’am. Miss? Sorry.”
“They think you’re private security.”
Declan turned eagerly at this fresh evidence of his own existence. He was beginning to wonder. “I’m not. Do you know who she is?” He proffered his hand comp hopefully, the grainy image flickering in the orange light of an overhead oil lantern.
The man behind the counter didn’t bother to look up from the chrome headlamp shell he was industriously wiping clean as he shook his thinning blonde head. If anything, he increased his efforts. “Sorry.”
Anger seeped into Declan’s voice, after a long struggle with his patience. “You didn’t even look.”
“Don’t have to. Doesn’t matter.”
“Why the hell not?” And immediately regretted language and tone when he saw the white collar paired with the black shirt.
The priest set the part down with extraordinary long-fingered hands and infinite care. “Look around you. What do you see?”
Declan shrugged. “I don’t know. Dregs, I suppose.”
The smile on the other man’s face was bittersweet. “These people you call dregs have been run to ground, given up on by nearly everyone. The Burnout Zone is the only haven they have left.”
“Point being?”
“Point being, no one here gives up anyone else. It may be the only rule we’ve got, but it’s ours.”
“Stop messing about with the Obi Wan Kenobi act, will you?” Declan ground out in deliberate tones meant for the slow of thinking. “It’s important I find her before someone else does.”
The priest nodded and went back to his polishing. “I shouldn’t worry about it. She’ll see them coming.”
Two could play it that way. “If you’re so keen on shielding her, shouldn’t someone tell her there’s a bounty on her head?”
He stopped polishing, opting to stare instead. “What? No, impossible.”
Declan wordlessly offered his hand comp once more. This time, to his immense relief, the priest took it.
After a good long look, he handed it back, looking at Declan with new eyes. “You truly mean her no harm?”
“Quite the opposite.”
“Well, I suppose if you’re lying, she’ll be the first to know.” He pointed with his chin since his hands were occupied. “The Tree and Flame. Follow the dinner crowd, you can’t miss it.”
Declan gave the man’s collar a pointed look. “Aren’t you supposed to discourage people going into pubs?”
A wise chuckle. “Far be it from me to deny anyone in this day and age a decent hot meal.”
“Thank you.”
The Tree and Flame wasn’t what he expected. Its long tables and benches were crowded with patrons, though where these people had obtained the money he couldn’t guess. They had no access to the electronic currency that replaced the now defunct paper and coin during the war, had no or non-working birth chips embedded beneath their skin. The dregs of society, hence the name.
An old man sat on a stool behind the bar knitting while a bartender hauled a stew pot of potatoes from the kitchen and dumped them with a muted rumble into a bin. It took him a moment, as she scraped the peel from a poor defenseless tuber as though it had done her personal injury, to recognize her.
Dark hair—auburn, he could see now in the fiery light of the hearth—in stark contrast to blushing ivory ski
n, braided neatly and bound in a knot at the back of her head. Not conventionally pretty, by any stretch of the imagination, but she did possess an interesting contrast of characteristics that pigeonholed her into the young, freshly attractive category. High cheekbones in an otherwise round face, lush curves and long torso on a figure uncompromisingly short. There was something about the way she stood beneath the sheathed sword mounted on the wall behind her that made him want to take inventory of all vital organs, so he would know if any turned up missing later.
In that moment her gaze found his in the dim room, the hearth fire threw shadows across the low ceiling of carved, thick-twining tree roots, and the entire place went dark.
The Dragon Stirs
Lynda Aicher
The energy might bind them, but their love could save us all…
When Shifter Airiana Draco volunteers to scout the enemy’s compound, her family thinks it's to prove herself. In truth, she wants answers. Plagued with doubt and a secret shame, she hungers to learn more about the Energens, the people who have opposed the Shifters since the beginning of time. But getting captured wasn't in her plans.
Energen Loukianos Aeros has always wondered about his exiled older brother who was accused of aiding their mortal enemy, the Shifters, long before Louk was born. Now, the answers Louk seeks are within his grasp when he stumbles upon a beautiful enemy spy right outside his door.
Forced together by the energy, Airiana and Louk are unprepared for the sudden attraction as they struggle to gain the answers they seek. As the danger builds and their lives are threatened, they must learn to trust the energy and each other. But are they strong enough to challenge all they were raised to believe or will the pressure cause them to turn on the one truth they can’t deny?
The time is coming when earth will be changed forever. The dragon is rising and with the joining of The Two, he stirs.
Warning: Mix two opposing forces with some elemental powers, add in a little shove from the energy and you get earth-shattering sex, one angry dragon, a world that is altered forever.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
The Dragon Stirs
Copyright © 2012 by Lynda Aicher
ISBN: 978-1-60928-718-4
Edited by Bethany Morgan
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: February 2012
www.samhainpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
About the Author
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