Addictive Paranormal Reads Halloween Box Set
Page 108
A curious sensation caught his attention moments before a group of Coalition soldiers moved out of the shadows, M-16's pointed in a coordinated sweep of the marketplace. A platoon sent to rout out insurgents. Al Qaida lay stationed on rooftops and in buildings. The rustle of insurgents moving into position to ambush the soldiers rippled through the marketplace like the all-too-infrequent Iraqi breeze.
Azrael resisted the urge to protect one side against the other. Maintaining his impartiality had grown difficult as Elisabeth had definite opinions about whose side he should favor. Death should never take sides. The best he could do was alleviate any fallen soldier's suffering, no matter how misguided their ideology, and see to it the battle remained one between mortal armies, not disembodied evil gods.
The rat-a-tat-tat of a Kalashnikov pierced the silence. The soldiers dove for cover and fired back. An IED exploded, hidden beneath the rubble. Drat! His rules against impartiality didn't apply to the loathsome devices, battle tactics of a coward. Soldiers screamed in agony as their fragile mortal shells were blown to smithereens, unaware they no longer had bodies to mouth those screams.
Still no sign of the squatter, but that peculiar sensation grew stronger, drawing his attention to an African-American soldier writhing on the ground. Azrael flitted to the man's side and flared his wings to provide a protective umbrella, an 'interference' he justified as 'I need to put my wings someplace while I make up my mind whether to take them or let them live?'
The man's flesh was nearly as dark as his was. Should he alleviate this soldier's suffering? Or were his injuries survivable? Elisabeth's ability to defeat him … and teach others how to defeat him as well … had blurred the line. Intestines writhed like grey snakes swimming through a bloody red stream where the soldier's entrails had been blasted out of his abdominal cavity. This man was already dead; his spirit just hadn't made up its mind yet to let go of his mortal shell. Even Elisabeth would approve of ending this man's suffering. Azrael made himself visible and reached down to take the soldier's hand.
"Come with me, brother," Azrael looked into the dark-skinned soldiers eyes. "It is time to take you home."
The man's eyes were wild with pain, so black and dark it felt for a moment as though he were staring into the eyes of the Regent. That peculiar throb grew stronger, more powerful, and more … ominous. The entrails writhing along the ground grew black and began to curl in upon themselves. Black … tentacles? The soldier screamed in pain, but instead of words, he screamed a sound Azrael knew well.
The Song of Destruction…
The ground shuddered and began to collapse inward upon itself, a vortex of power so vast it made even Azrael cringe in fear. Tentacles moved towards the rubble littering the marketplace, absorbing the bonds which kept their molecules together and absorbing their energy. An Agent? No. No Agent knew the Song of Destruction or Moloch would have been freed eons ago. The man's face contorted in agony, so black and beautiful he appeared almost a statute of a martyr.
"Corporal," Azrael read the bars off the man's beige desert camouflage. "Who are you?"
The Song of Destruction grew louder as the black tentacles clutched at any matter within reach and shoved it into the gaping black hole left in the man's abdomen by the improvised explosive device. Rubble, a piece of his rifle, and the engine block of a parked car which had been detonated along with the bomb were shoved into the increasing vortex and disappeared. It occurred to Azrael that perhaps he might be in danger? He backed away, not sure how to prevent such an event when it was somebody else's anger fueling a void-matter incident and not his own.
A flash of blinding white light appeared in front of the dying man. Alliance uniform. Dark hair. Black-brown wings. The General kneeled at the dying man's side, unharmed by the deadly black tentacles even though they wound around his arm the way an injured soldier might squeeze the hand of a medic.
"You must temper your power, brother, or you will destroy this world," the General said gently to the dying man. "Come. Your sister will heal these wounds."
"I cannot," the soldier cried out. "I cannot subdue the hunger any longer."
The General touched the man's cheek, his expression one of pity.
"You have come so far, brother," the General said. "Would you give up hope before you have found the gift your sister has given me?"
The General's touch brought whatever the void creature needed to control its power. Black tentacles grew smaller and faded, leaving nothing but the shattered intestines of a dying man, but already the man had begun to heal. The General picked up the soldier and cradled him against his chest.
"Forget what you have seen here today," the General ordered. "And speak of it to nobody. Not even to this soldier if you should ever happen upon him again. The fate of not only this world, but the entire universe depends upon him not remembering who he is until he has completed his mission."
With a flash of blinding white light, the General and the dying soldier disappeared, leaving Azrael with the memory of the man's bottomless black eyes, vast with power. He had seen that face once before, those stern eyes staring out of a sculpture shaped by the Regent's own hand. The man she called her brother.
What was He-Who's-Not doing on Earth, disguised as a mortal?
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Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One
Epic fantasy/Space opera
At the dawn of time, two ancient adversaries battled for control of Earth. One man rose to fight at humanity's side. A soldier whose name we still remember today…
Earth: 3,390 BC
Pain.
The first sensation he recognized was metal piercing flesh. He gurgled in agony as lungs scraped against the steel rod which had pierced his breast, pinning him to the deck of his ship like a butterfly. He could not even scream. The best he could do was pant small, shallow breaths.
Blood welled in his throat, burning and gagging as he exhaled. The stench of blood filled the air. The scent of his impending death. One wing lay shattered beneath him, bone piercing skin and feathers. The other had no sensation at all. He tried to move his arm, but it was broken. The other arm and wing were pinned beneath the collapsed bridge. He could not feel his legs. He had no idea whether they were pinned, broken, or severed completely from his body.
His head hurt as though someone had hit him with a club. He tried to remember his name, who he was and how he had gotten here, but his mind drew a blank. It did not matter. No living creature could sustain these kinds of injuries and survive.
‘So this is it,’ he thought. ‘The end...’
Alone. A single tear escaped, the sting of salt as it passed over a cut oddly sharp through the pain of his other injuries. Alone. He had always known he would die alone.
He closed his eyes and prayed to pass quietly into the void, to feel his life slip from his body so that his pain would end, but he did not. Even close to death, some part of him, the part that remembered who he was, whispered. Fight. Survive. Live another day. Smite those who had done this to him, even though he had no recollection of who he fought or what he was fighting for.
Long after he should have passed from this world, Mikhail continued to fight for each and every breath.
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eISBN-13: 978-0985896-0-1
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A Moment of your Time, Please…
Did you enjoy reading this book? If so, I would be most grateful if you would do me the honor of revisiting whatever distribution platform you purchased it from and leaving a written review. This book took more than a year of my life to write working diligently for 5-6 hours each day. Unfortunately, without the multi-billion dollar advertising budget of a big commercial publishing house, most independently published and small-press books do not make back the cost to produce them (much less eat while writing them) … unless … readers such as yourself pass along word
to others that you enjoyed it. In this day of online shopping, websites rank which books you see and readers decide what books to buy based on reviews left by other readers. I would be oh-so-grateful if you would return to the distribution platform where you purchased this book and did me the honor of leaving a written review.
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About the Cover Photograph
The Angel of Death monument in Wroclaw, Poland memorializes the 1940 murder of 22,000 Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and prisoners-of-war by the NKVD in the forest of Katyń by order of Josef Stalin during World War II. Designed by Warsaw sculptor Tadeusz Tchórzewski, the striking monument depicts the sword-wielding Angel of Death on a high pedestal over the figure of Katyń Pieta - the Matron of the Homeland despairing over the body of a murdered prisoner of war. Symbolic granite walls/graves flank the scene, with the names of the POW camps and places of mass murder inscribed on them. Anguished, terrifying and gruesome in turn, with detail down to the bullet hole in the back of the fallen officer's head, this evocative monument was unveiled in 1999 and can be found in the park next to the Racławice Panorama.
The cover photograph used for this book was digitally remastered from the one above taken by ~xartez, a local Polish photographer, and used with his kind permission. Please visit his website to enjoy his other magnificent photographs and purchases prints.
http://xartez.deviantart.com/art/Angel-of-Death-35266069
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About Anna Erishkigal
Anna Erishkigal is an attorney who writes fantasy fiction as a pleasurable alternative to coming home from court and cross-examining her children. She writes under a pen-name so her colleagues don't question whether her legal pleadings are fantasy fiction as well. Much of law, it turns out, -is- fantasy fiction. Lawyers just prefer to call it 'zealously representing your client.'
Seeing the dark underbelly of life makes for some interesting fictional characters, the kind you either want to incarcerate, or run home and write about. In fiction, you can fudge facts without worrying too much about the truth. In legal pleadings, if your client lies to you, you look stupid in front of the judge.
At least in fiction, if a character becomes troublesome, you can always kill them off.
Her general-purpose Facebook page is at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Anna-Erishkigal-author/203837383044945
Twitter: @AnnaErishkigal
Or view book extras, including maps of the real-life village of Assur, fantasy casting calls, artwork of the different species, inspirations, bits and pieces of research, and excerpts from upcoming books at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sword-of-the-Gods/266590273421583
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Other Books by Anna Erishkigal
Sword of the Gods Saga:
-The Chosen One
-Prince of Tyre
-Agents of Ki (ETA November 2013)
Children of the Fallen:
-Angel of Death: A Love Story
www.seraphim-press.com
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Footnotes
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[1] Hope is the Thing with Feathers - Emily Dickenson
[2] Oh Liebe Miener Liebe, by Johann Heerman (1644)
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