by Amy Hopkins
Her hands slipped, unable to grip the smooth, rubbery flesh. She plunged into the water, struggled to the surface under the weight of her wet clothes, then sank again.
Her arms flailed, pushing her back up to the roiling surface to gasp for air.
A shadow crossed over Penny, blocking the light. An explosion of bubbles threw her back down before an enormous, writhing weight slammed into her, trapping her under the water.
It had worked, she realized, even as a mess of suckers and limbs closed around her. The Kraken fell. It worked!
Penny’s lungs strained. Her ears buzzed as her body screamed and finally let out the last of her precious air in a rush of bubbles.
The darkness closed around her as a final thought drifted through her mind. I don’t want to go home.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Penny came to, coughing dank water into a puddle on the sand. The pulsing in her head took up a rhythmic beat.
“Pull us up!” The scream beside her seemed distant, then she rose into the air.
Penny wondered if she had died and this was her passage into the afterlife.
Does it have to be so noisy? The crisp, pulsing beat grew louder and made Penny think of that movie, the one where everyone was at war, and a chopper had come to collect the injured.
“Let’s go!”
Movement clutched at her gut.
Wait. That is a chopper. She tried to ask what was going on, but the words came out as a garbled moan.
“Kid?” She opened her eyes to find a helmeted face peering into hers. “She’s alive!” The face disappeared, and darkness fluttered back in. As she drifted off, she imagined the voice again. “Does anyone know how to get the snake to fill up the river again?”
Penny missed final exam week and had to request extensions on all her assignments, all of which were approved without question.
Her recovery from near-drowning came at a miraculous rate, but the buzz around the mission had rocked her mind and scattered her concentration for weeks.
None of it, though, came close to the shock and awe she felt when viewing the news footage.
A journalist en route to film some feel-good shots of the bridge festival from overhead had covered it all from a helicopter—the giant squid breaking the water’s surface, Penny’s capture and eventual attack, and the unbelievable act that had saved her life.
Boots had swallowed the river.
More than the epic battle against a mythological horror, the city of Portland had been awed and enamored with the video of the rainbow-colored serpent lying along the now-dry Willamette River, swollen to the size of the channel and bloated with water as it sucked away the deadly river that threatened to drown Penny.
When the journalist had seen a dim circle of light peeking out from between two limp tentacles, he’d thought it was nothing. The trio on the riverbank waving their arms and pointing at it? Probably just excited about the giant squid.
However, the call over the chopper radio had given that tiny light all new significance. “There’s a girl down there,” said the voice, apparently someone from the FBI.
Sensing the scoop of the century, the journalist and his pilot had landed in the middle of the Willamette. If that didn’t get them a Pulitzer, then the rescue of the woman who had saved Portland certainly would.
When she’d finished watching the footage on her phone for about the ninetieth time, Penny reached out to scratch Boots' back. “I’m glad they didn’t see you leave,” Penny mused.
After the chopper had left, Boots had opened her giant mouth. The footage showed the river swelling as the serpent shrank.
As far as the people of Portland knew, Boots had swum off to some magical land.
Penny tapped the completed assignment in front of her. It was titled The Kraken and detailed the history of the monster, and contained a log of events related to her acquisition of one of its suckers, harvested and given to her by Cisco from the limb Red had sliced off during the fight.
The library door swung open, and Cisco, Red, and Amelia piled in. “Are you done?” Amelia asked. “I know you said you needed this week to finish your assignments, but come on! We haven’t celebrated yet!”
“You look pretty done to me, Penny.” Red picked up the assignment and flicked through the pages. “Is that your last one?”
Penny lifted her hand and waggled it. “Just one more thing to do,” she explained.
The door opened again and Dean March strode in, two sheets of paper in her hand. “On my desk by five p.m., please.”
Penny took the papers, grinning. “Of course, Dean March.”
“What’s that?” Cisco leaned over to peek at the paperwork. His eyes widened, and his smile grew. “Penny, are you…”
“What is it?” Red asked, stepping back as Amelia slid past him.
“Enrollment forms!” Amelia screeched. She threw her arms around Penny. “You’re staying!”
Penny hugged her back, meeting Cisco’s eyes over her friend’s shoulder. “Yeah. I’m staying.”
THE END
The Story Continues
Book two in the series, Werewolves and Wendigo will be available in about 30 days at Amazon and through Kindle Unlimited.
Does a werewolf’s fur match his natural hair color?
I think I’m about to find out. Boots and I are back at the Academy, with a few changes — we’re now officially in training to be Special Agents, and that means we get to go on super secret missions.
Something is on the hunt. I can feel it in my bones. Except, the evidence doesn’t add up.
It’s not like I don’t have enough to do. I need a job — someone has to pay for Boots’s newfound love of lattes and pastries. And of course, classes are even more grueling than ever. And then there’s Red’s weird behavior…
With Boots at my side I’m ready to plunge into a new semester. Let’s just hope we make it out alive.
Author Notes - Amy Hopkins
October 19, 2019
If you read the dedication (everyone reads that, right?), you’ll know where Penny came from.
As authors, we’re always told no to self-insert, that writing your own ass into a book is the height of egotism, that books based on the people who wrote them are pretentious.
Fuck those people.
Except… Penny isn’t really based on me. She’s kind of an amalgamation of all the Aussie women I know. All the friends I’ve had, all the women I’ve looked up to. She is born of the white sand of Airlie, the dripping leaves in Paluma, the slick stones of Paronella, the long, winding mindfuck of the Bruce when you left at 4am, the sun is setting right in your eyes, and home is still a few hours away.
None of those are the globally known places of Australia. They’re not Bondi or the Opera House, Uluru or sexy Melbourne. They’re the places I remember from years ago, places that will probably look a lot smaller when I finally go back.
Mike told me to stop pretending. Stop pretending I’m not an Aussie girl, that I don’t live in a small town, that I know how to walk in stilettos and rock a miniskirt. I don’t. I wear jeans and t-shirts, my hairdresser knows the drill (I don’t care as long as I can put it in a ponytail), my only shoes are sneakers, gumboots, work boots and a single pair of sandals for ‘going out’. My friends are all the same. We’re practical, sensible, and our adventures are on beaches and mountains, not nightclubs and fashion strips. I love reading about those things, but they’re not me.
I was scared to do that. MY life? It’s pretty chill, and I love it, but it doesn’t make for riveting reading. Michael assured me otherwise. With the right setting, the right cast, my small town Aussie girl would shine.
I think she did. Penny isn’t a character in a book. Not anymore. By about the second page, she was real, living, breathing, and sassing me right from the page.
(That’s my recollection of events, anyway. Michael’s version might be more along the lines of “I dunno, I said some stuff, she said some stuff, I said try writ
e an Aussie character.” I may have read a little more into it, but you get the idea.)
-A. H.
P.S. Screw Dora. I got all the way to final edits before someone pointed out that Boots, Diego (Cisco’s original name) and Backpack are all Dora the Explorer characters. For the sake of my readers and to save them from the relentless torture of having the backpack song stuck in their head, I changed Diego to Cisco.
I’m still salty.
Author Notes - Michael Anderle
October 24, 2019
Thank you for reading this book and following Amy and Jace on these crazy adventures when the Veil is torn asunder!
A very short bit about me. I’m just under four years old as a releasing author. My first book (Death Becomes Her – The Kurtherian Gambit 01) was released on November 2, 2015. Since then, I’ve written dozens of books and been a collaborator on dozens of series. Along the way, I built a fairly large Indie Publishing company.
To that end, I met Amy Hopkins when she worked on the Age of Magic with CM Raymond and LE Barbant. I’m not sure how the three of them met, but they have a great relationship. Fast forward, and I was minding my own damned business when Amy and Jace interrupted my very important meeting (read this as “I was probably tacking a nap because of jetlag.”)
The one important aspect of Amy I knew about was her biting Aussie humor. I never know what might come out of her mouth (or fingers since we communicate via ZOOM or Slack messaging mostly), and I felt she should let loose and be her in these books.
I thought, if there is someone who is scathingly truthful and funny, it’s her.
(CM Simpson as well, but she is also an Australian. So it makes total sense that Amy and co. are cornering the market on this type of writing and humor.)
So, when I was talking with her, I was encouraging Amy to allow her inner snark to reign supreme. Then I realized exactly who I was talking to.
Perhaps, I thought, I should suggest a bit of restraint.
So, it’s my fault if you are easily offended. Nothing I can do about it at this point, but I hope you aren’t ;-)
So, sit back, grab your e-reader of choice, and enjoy these stories. Amy and Jace are sure to entertain ;-)
Ad Aeternitatem,
Michael Anderle
Books By Michael Anderle
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