I knew exactly who he meant. I really didn’t want to hear any more of this. It was bound to get sappy at some point. “That’s nice, Deryk. You still aren’t answering my question.”
“Oh, I’ll hire her eventually. But she needs mortal roots before I can consider her application seriously. The last thing the AO needs is a rogue djinn dispensing her own brand of justice under my authority with no mortal interests to keep her in check.”
“She has mortal interests,” I told him with a sigh. “She’s involved with Jack at the Magitech Lounge.”
He looked a bit surprised at that. “Oh, really? I had no idea. How seriously?”
“Looked pretty serious to me. I take it you know something about Jack?”
“You might say that. I’ve had an agent on him for a long, long time.”
Now that caught my interest. “Why is that?”
He shook his head with a wry grin, his way of telling me he wasn’t going to discuss it with me. I’ve always hated when he did that.
I sighed again. “So you’re going to hire her?”
“Yep. If she’s building a mortal life, she’s exactly the type of person we need right now. We’re starting to pick up some rather disconcerting murmurs from the clan vampires. They’re starting to amass some political power here on Prime, and, to tell you the truth, I’m a little worried about what they plan on doing with it.”
I frowned at that. “I’m not sure how much use she’d be, since most vampires are pretty resistant to magic.”
He shrugged. “Depends on how you use it. I’m no mage, as you well know, but I can think of a couple ways she could use it to devastating effect while negating their immunities at the same time.”
As you can imagine, this piqued my interest. Deryk didn’t often weigh in on magical matters because he wasn’t a mage, but he was a smart son of a bitch regardless and I generally consider it wise to pay close attention to anything he had to say.
“I’ve gotta hear this,” Nyx said, planting her shapely ass on the corner of Deryk’s desk. As Montague tried to push himself to his knees, she swung out a foot and caught him in the ribs. He collapsed back onto the grass-like carpet with a hoarse wheeze.
Sometimes she can be even harder than I am, and that’s saying something.
Deryk had one of his telltale grins in place, the kind that says “I’m so smart I scare myself”. “Imagine having hundreds of mana threads at your disposal. What would happen if you used them to channel sunlight from one side of the globe to the other?”
“Will that work?” Nyx asked me as if I’d know. I’d never tried that particular trick. The best I could do was to string together fifty or so threads. The idea of being able to manipulate hundreds, or even over a thousand, left me a little dazzled. But I had the feeling that the djinn—Dylan—could do just that.
“How good a mage was she?” I asked. As a djinn, she could no longer see or touch free-floating mana, but she had an awful lot to work with anyway. Her core was a spell, but the energy that formed her physical shell was made up of a myriad of strands that were hers to command.
If anyone could do what Deryk was describing, it would be that woman.
“She was a mageship pilot,” he said, which told me everything I needed to know. Only the best of the best were chosen for that position. If she beat out the literally hundreds of other candidates for the post, she was among the best the Confed had to offer.
“Sounds like a perfect AO agent,” I said.
Nyx nodded, then turned a baleful eye on the guy on the floor. “You try to get up again, I’m going to kick a field goal with your head,” she told him.
He sagged back down and lay there, huffing comically.
“What are you going to do with this bozo?” I asked him.
“Hell, I don’t know. I don’t want him. I’d just have to transport him to some penal colony, and arrange for him to be psychically deadened every so often so he didn’t affect an escape. Fucking pain in the ass.”
“We could just kill him,” Nyx said blandly. “Less trouble all around.”
For some reason, Deryk has never received suggestions like this one very gracefully. He shot her an icy glare and shook his head. “Uh-uh. That’s not the way we do things here and you both know it.”
Nyx waved a hand as if brushing away a fly. “Some people are just a waste of oxygen,” she said.
Many folks find it hard to believe, but Nyx actually has less regard for human life than I do. Particularly the lives of people like Montague. Those who preyed on innocents were my particular pet peeve and I usually had no qualms about sending them skipping merrily off this mortal coil. But Nyx despises people who abuse their authority. If given free reign, she’d leave a bloody trail of tyrant corpses through all the universes and not feel a minute’s guilt over it.
I love her, but sometimes she scares the shit out of me. There are times I find myself wondering if she’s waiting for me to step over some invisible line. Let me tell you, that line of thinking gives me the creeps. I like to think she’d warn me first, but sometimes I can’t help remembering that this is a woman who has slain two different versions of herself, doppelgangers who in her opinion had taken the wrong path.
Admittedly, they were some screwed up individuals. But the notion of killing another version of myself makes my head spin. I don’t know if I could do it. So far I haven’t had to. Thank God.
“Well,” I suggested to Deryk, “what if we take him with us to Starhaven and let the Immortal High Court decide what to do with him?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You could do that?”
“Sure. Why not? When the mageship he meddled with jumped universes, it took the whole ball of wax into the Court’s court, so to speak. He can be tried under its authority.”
Deryk clapped his hands together. “Good! Let them decide what to do with him. I like that solution best of all.”
I considered pointing out that he was dumping the whole matter in his son’s lap, but thought better of it. Deryk still hadn’t really come to terms with his son’s death and resurrection and I thought it would be pretty cruel of me to bring it up now.
Nyx chuckled evilly. “You hear that, Montague? We’re taking you somewhere where you have a chance of experiencing real justice. Not like the mamby-pamby justice they have around here. Get up.”
He shakily rose to his feet, keeping his gaze pointed at his shoes. He wasn’t about to do anything else to rouse her ire. He was smarter than he’d seemed at first, I decided.
“If you want to take him to Starhaven now,” I told her, “I’ll follow in a few minutes. I’ve got a couple more things to discuss with Deryk.”
She hit me with one of her piercing stares and then nodded. “Okay. Don’t take too long. Remember, we’re supposed to be meeting Gimp for lunch.”
Trust her to remember something that had completely slipped my mind. “I’ll only be a few more minutes,” I repeated.
“Love you,” she said.
“Love you too,” I answered back. And, damn me, I did. Am I crazy or what?
Once she’d gone, Deryk fired off a sympathetic look, which I deflected with a glower. Yes, I know she’s a handful, but she’s my handful. I don’t need anyone’s pity, least of all Deryk Shea’s.
“So what did you want to talk about?” he asked.
“Who do you think’s behind this whole clan business?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
Seeing my skepticism, he shook his head. “I’m serious. It may be that Jason Keening’s back in the picture, but I don’t think so. Several months back a powerful female vamp showed up, but she got thoroughly spanked at the Lounge.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“That’s right. You were involved in that, weren’t you?”
I shrugged. “The Lounge is my territory,” I said simply. “I know what goes on there.”
“I imagine you do. No, I think Keening is too chickenshit to come here personal
ly. He’d rather send others to do his dirty work.”
“Like killing his mother?”
“Yeah…like killing his mother. What a bastard. I liked Gina, though I didn’t know her very well.”
“She created the Conclave,” I said. “That speaks well of her in itself.”
“Indeed.” He sighed heavily and walked around his desk to throw himself into his chair. “No, I think Keening has sent another powerful minion in to cause trouble. We’re going to have to find out who it is and deal with him—or her—before things get out of hand.”
“If you need any backup, let me know, will you?”
“I will, Jaz. I appreciate that, even though I’ve never taken you up on it. My agents do pretty well for themselves.”
“You’ve always picked the best, Deryk.” I grabbed a spell sigil and used it to activate a worldgate to Starhaven. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too, Jaz.” He told me.
I threw him an irreverent sketch of a salute and stepped into infinity.
About the Author
Saje has been a Northwest native for most of his life, and currently resides in Tacoma, WA, with his wife and an assortment of furry kids. He’s also the proud father of two bipedal children as well, but they currently live elsewhere.
When not writing, he’s either working, thinking about writing, or doing both at the same time. This tends to cause a bit of confusion when he’s standing at a sixth-floor window gauging the distance between the building in which he works and the adjacent parking garage and wondering whether a vampire could easily make the leap.
He happens to believe a vampire could make that leap, but he’s reluctant to discuss the matter with his co-workers.
Saje is currently awaiting the publication of the next two novels in his genre-bending paranormal science-fantasy series, the Infinity: Earth Saga. He’s also a recipient of the Loveromances Rising Star award.
His website address is www.sajewilliams.com
His yahoo group is groups.yahoo.com/group/Infinitycollective .
Look for these titles
Now Available:
Sword and Shadow
© 2007 Saje Williams
Vampires are immune to many things. Apparently love isn’t one of them.
Assigned to monitor a backwater version of Earth, Raven enjoys his job immensely. Play at being a native, watch for operatives of the voracious Cen Empire, and keep an eye out for evil mages. Not too difficult for the undead hero of the Cen War. It’s almost like a vacation.
Unfortunately, when he stumbles upon a cache of advanced weapons, he is forced to report that fact back to headquarters, who in turn send him an agent trained in such matters―the vibrant, vivacious, and utterly aggravating Valerie Winn―to deal with the problem.
On her first solo assignment for the Technological Activities Unit (TAU), Val can’t help but take her job seriously. But dealing with the legendary Raven’s maddening disrespect for any rules but his own pushes her patience to the breaking point.
Even though they strike sparks from one another, they have to learn to work together. The seemingly simple assignment turns out to be much more important than anyone realized. The fate of a thousand versions of Earth might well hang in the balance.
Part of this title was previously released as part of a series.
Enjoy this excerpt from Sword and Shadow:
Val woke suddenly, clawing her way out of the chair and facing the shadow standing across the room.
Raven doffed his coat and hat and turned his eyes to her. Something fluttered in the pit of her stomach. Just hunger, she told herself, not really sure if she was being completely honest or not. The guy irritated the hell out of her. There was no reason for her to be having this sort of reaction to him.
Then he shocked her by stripping out of his black shirt and tossing it across the back of another chair. His slim, muscular torso gleamed like polished ivory in the dim light from the gas lantern in the corner. His chest was hairless, and completely unscarred, she noted. He drifted from the room without a word. A moment later the shirt vanished from the chair. She stared at the spot it had vacated.
What the hell was that? she wondered. Why wouldn’t he change his shirt in privacy? Why peel it off right in front of her?
Unless, of course, he hadn’t even noticed she was there. Maybe he was that distracted.
He walked back through the doorway about ten minutes later, chest sheathed in a tight blue linen shirt. His hair looked wet. “That was a quick bath,” she observed.
He ran fingers through his hair and shrugged. “Guess so.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me. Where’s your tub? How do you get hot water to it? You don’t have a staff here, do you? Do you use magic? Isn’t that risky, considering the Deacons might spot you working mana?”
He just stared at her for a long moment. “I have a shower. With a water heater.”
Her jaw dropped. “Hidden, I suppose.”
“Buried about a hundred feet below the house. I plumbed this place myself—believe me, magic makes the job a lot easier. But I’m sure you’d rather use a water closet than a chamber pot. Am I wrong?”
“Water closet?”
“Old Earth term. Means a toilet.”
“We’re trained to handle—“
“—handle has a different definition than appreciate. Sure you’re trained to handle primitive conditions. Doesn’t mean you have to do it when an alternative is available.”
She frowned. “Okay, sure. So why would you include toilets in your plumbing plan if you don’t need to use one?”
“Sheer perversity. Seriously? Because this is a dimensional station—and if I get company from anyone not a TAU fanatic, they’d appreciate being able to use decent facilities.”
“And what makes you think I won’t?”
“You getting your panties in a bunch about my shooting that ’thrope, for one thing. I gotta say, TAU’s brainwashing techniques are pretty damn impressive. Nearly every TAU agent I’ve run across is a damn freak for technological purity. I’m not sure why. The worst thing that might happen is that some fifty years in the future, after I’ve been reassigned and the house has fallen into disrepair, someone might come along and accidentally unearth the water heater. The wizards will debate its purpose for a few weeks and forget all about it. It won’t contaminate shit.”
She opened her mouth to object and snapped it shut again. “You have a point.”
On the run from an intergalactic mob boss, she kidnaps the earthling security expert who helped her. Her plan? Make him forget about tomorrow.
Forget About Tomorrow
© 2007 Liz Kreger
Larissalyia Ashanti, is hiding out on Earth, a barbarian planet unsanctified by the FOW—Federation of Worlds—and on the run from an intergalactic mob boss who plans to use her as leverage to force her magistrate father to clear his criminal record.
Mac, an earthman, witnesses the evidence of aliens when the mob catches up with Lacey. After he helps her fight them off, she does the only thing she can think of—she kidnaps him and takes him with her as she flees Earth. Mac learns the answer to that age old question of whether there’s life out there…in spades. But not only does he have to convince Lacey that his numerous skills are indispensable, he has to find a way into her heart.
The chase is just beginning…and so are the romance, adventure and danger as they cross the universe in search of safety and answers.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Forget About Tomorrow:
“So, now what?”
Her attention snapped back to Mac. He hadn’t turned from his contemplation of the stars outside the ship, yet something in his manner told her he was aware of everything she did.
“Now we go to Cyber Five where we regroup and make plans.”
“We?”
“You are along for the ride, Victor.”
The use of his name gained her a look of irritation. For a moment she thought he was
going to protest her use of his name, but then he shrugged.
“Do you plan to wipe my memory there?” he asked.
Larissalyia hesitated. It would be a good place to do it. She had everything she needed for the procedure. There was really no reason to wait. Other than the fact that she couldn’t return Mac to Earth yet. Not while it was likely that one of the Kyrions might be lying in wait. It didn’t make sense to wipe his memory quite yet.
Finally she shook her head. “No, as I said, I cannot return you to your world until the danger is past,” she replied as she justified her decision in her own mind. “I have no doubt my father will succeed within another one of Earth’s moon’s cycles. I’d only have to wipe it again after that time.”
“That’s reassuring.”
She pretended not to notice his dry tone. “Cyber Five is just a stop off for supplies and somewhere I can figure out where to go to create a new identity for you.”
“Is that necessary?”
“Very. I am not quite sure what the F.O.W. would do with you if it is discovered you are from an unsanctioned planet, but I do know I would be in big trouble.”
“So it’s in your best interest that I keep my mouth shut.”
She slid him a quick glance. This conversation was entering dangerous space. “It is in both of our best interest.”
“I’d say you’re the one who’s ass deep in alligators, honey. After all, you kidnapped me. It isn’t like I had much of a choice.”
Larissalyia twisted in her seat to focus on the look of satisfaction in his face. He thought he had a hold over her. Her anger threatened to erupt.
“Look, barbarian. It would be just as easy for me to jettison you from this ship.”
“I doubt you’d do that.” There was no mistaking the smugness in his tone. He too swiveled his chair until he faced her. “Seems to me you went through a lot of trouble on Earth to make sure I took no harm from that Sinion blade thing. You could have just as easily let me die from that wound. You’re not the type to commit cold-blooded murder.”
Tales from the Magitech Lounge Page 24