Dire Consequences: The Alexander Matthews Chronicles Book 1

by Leji Albano

  Stunned, all she could do was stand there as the medical team rushed his lifeless body past her and into the villa. He can’t be dead, she thought. I never even got the chance to say good-bye. It was at that moment that she realized she had already forgiven him. Stupid, really, because she should have been asking him to forgive her for being such an ass about the whole thing. The nails of her fingers were biting into her palms, drawing blood, though she didn’t feel it. Her body was shaking from the sudden burst of anger and adrenaline that flooded her system.

  This must be what he felt that night, flitted across her consciousness as she finally understood how he could have done what he did. A part of her carefully filed that thought away to be examined later, but for now, her focus was on the figure being dragged between the security team to stand before Enzo. She tilted her head curiously as she studied the man. Maybe early thirties in apparent age, 5’8” in height, slicked back black curly hair, and five o’clock shadow. He was cursing at Enzo in Italian and struggling against his captors as he was halted just in front of the Beta. Enzo’s right arm launched forward, and a fist landed in his gut, folding the perpetrator over from the force of the punch. Tina smiled a little at that, but it wasn’t nearly enough. No, not enough at all. Her wolf was insistent, howling with rage, and she consciously surrendered to it. Tina pondered appropriate punishments for a moment, then calmly descended the steps, gliding up behind the Beta. Her right hand reached down and tugged Enzo’s pistol from the holster at his hip, then she gracefully pirouetted around him, right shoulder and arm facing Enzo throughout the motion, stopping only when she was squared up with the assassin. She raised her arm and when the pistol sights aligned on the prisoner, she fired two rounds into his heart and one into his head, at point-blank range. Warm blood splattered the front of her body and face, but if Tina noticed, she gave no indication. The look of shock on the shooter's face as she executed him was priceless.

  She turned ninety degrees to her left and took a step back, placing everyone within her peripheral vision, unsure of how they would react. Tina automatically ejected the magazine to ensure she still had ammo, then reseated it into the butt of the pistol. When she looked up, Enzo was signaling his team to stand down. She had an ice-cold, stoic look on her face when she asked, “Do we have a problem here, Enzo?”

  “No, Signorina, although it perhaps would have been best had I been able to question him first.”

  Tina shrugged dispassionately, then tucked the weapon into the small of her back, the waistband of her pants holding it in place. “I’ll be keeping this.”

  She walked past him, never even glancing at all of the shocked faces that looked at her as she made her way back into the villa. Behind her, Enzo and his team shared stunned looks with the Pack members who had witnessed what had just happened.

  To Be Continued….

  Author Notes

  Wow. I can’t believe I’m actually writing this. How I got here is all due to a strange series of events.

  Flash back to June 2017. I had just been laid off from a job that was not only slowly killing me, but was also crushing my soul. And of course, I was let go the day before my family and I were to fly out for a three-week vacation in southern Italy, a vacation that we had been planning for almost two years.

  Strangely enough, my new status of being unemployed didn’t really bother me, and while I spent the first week just decompressing, the second found me asking myself—what now?

  One evening, as we lounged around after a full day of sightseeing, I expressed my dissatisfaction with the book I was currently reading. My wife, evidently fed up with listening to me bitch about how I could do better than a lot of what passed for literature these days, rolled her eyes and said—Do it. Or shut up (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea). Challenge accepted! I sat down and began to write my first short story.

  Which brings us to my first novel, the book you have just read…hopefully. Urban Fantasy/Paranormal was not something I spent much time on. Not really my cup of tea, you see. Or so I was convinced. That all changed one evening after we returned to the States and I was channel-surfing. I ended up watching a couple of episodes of Ancient Aliens on the History Channel. At first, I was amazed that it had survived for so many seasons. Then I was horrified by the thought that people actually believed this was a thing. And finally, I decided to see if I could come up with any premise that might hold up given that some of what was presented were true. The vast majority of it was utter bullshit, but I picked over what they offered and selected a few nuggets to build a story around.

  At this point it was merely a thought exercise…a way to amuse myself while watching a man with the worst hair-do I have ever seen present this BS as fact. Eventually though, I had pieced together a story that wasn’t horrible. And actually, it was pretty damned interesting (as long as you could suspend dis-belief).

  When I realized that it would have werewolves, vampires and other cryptids, my one absolute criterion was that there would be no magic. None of my characters would sparkle, thank you very much. It had to be based on science. Granted, the science was so advanced that much of it would seem like magic, but still, science.

  Basic premise in mind, I sat down to write the story. Three months later, the book was done. Less than a year after that and I had two follow-on books making up a trilogy (and a shit-ton of ideas for associated shorts and additional novels). They practically wrote themselves.

  Now I just needed the money to pay for proper editing, artwork, etc.… Which meant going back to work, at which point my writing speed quickly dropped. Funny how that works. Anyway, in a nutshell, that is the story of how this book came to be.

  Thanks for reading, and if you enjoyed it, please leave a review on Amazon, preferably 4 or 5 stars. The more the better for a new author such as me. If it does well enough, books two and three will follow in short order.

  L. D. Albano, November 2020

  For those who are curious, or just have an excess of time on their hands, I have a blog that I use as a forum for things that interest me…and where I discuss my writing process, challenges, etc. Just hop on over to:

  https://inadvertentconsequences.com