Of Alliance and Rebellion
Page 23
And, even though paralyzed with fear, all Grace could think of was the scorching pain of Dahlia’s fingers where they still clutched her arm.
Screams began to echo as the men and women who worked at the facility realized what was happening. Feet thundered as everyone sought shelter.
But Grace scrambled away from Dahlia and out into the open as soon as the woman’s grip on Grace’s arm slackened.
Dahlia’s arm snaked out and captured the back of Grace’s jacket. “What the hell?”
“Don’t touch me!” Grace shrieked so loudly that Dahlia drew back in shock.
A huge chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling to land right beside Grace. A cloud of white exploded from its impact and dusted both of them. Desks began to skitter across the floor.
“Do you want to die?” Dahlia yelled, blinking the white powder from her lashes.
Die or be touched? No contest. Grace didn’t move.
The earthquake gained in intensity. The glass that made up the ceiling of the dome tinkled and Grace looked up as a crack spider-webbed from one end of the dome to the other.
“Okay,” Dahlia said fast and low. “I won’t touch you. Just get your ass under here right now!”
Grace dragged her eyes from the ceiling to look into the dim space beneath the desk. Dahlia pressed herself against the side, leaving more than enough room for Grace to fit without having to be against the other woman. And still she hesitated.
Across the dome, bookshelves began to fall like dominoes, each one hitting the ground with a resounding boom. The tinkling of the glass ceiling increased and one or two shards escaped and plummeted toward the ground.
With a deep breath for courage, Grace dove into the area beside Dahlia just as the ceiling gave way.
The glass chimed like clock-tower bells as it fell. It tinkled off of every surface and bounced from the floor in glittering arcs. Grace watched in horror as a huge shard caught one of the soldiers as he tried to dive under a desk a few feet away. His scream cut off as the glass sliced through his chest and pinned him to the floor right where Grace had been kneeling seconds before.
Grace huddled into the corner and buried her face against the wood of the desk so hard she thought her nose might break.
The waves of the ground moved as though alive beneath Grace, hitting her in the shins and knees again and again as she knelt and causing her stomach to lurch as though seasick. Beside her, she heard Dahlia begin to recite the rosary in Spanish in a low, breathless voice. As a backdrop, the glass on the floor clacked and pinged as the entire building shimmied with the rage of the earth.
And in the next heartbeat, everything stopped.
Grace’s frantic breaths in the sudden absence of sound were excruciatingly loud, but the silence didn’t last for long. Moans from the wounded began to fill the air.
She heard her boss, Eli Johnson, bellowing his past-due pregnant wife’s name as he barreled through the dome from his office and toward the medical wing.
“Jericho,” Dahlia breathed next to her. Then she scrambled from her hiding spot, sliding in the blood that slicked across the floor from the impaled man before gaining purchase and sprinting in Eli’s wake.
Grace stared dumbfounded at the glassy eyes of the dead man in front of her before forcing herself to emerge from the desk.
Utter destruction waited for her. Her eyes skimmed over the demolished main room of the facility. Everything was … gone. Desks were smashed. Books were flung to every wall of the room. The glass on the floor glittered like diamonds among the pools of blood. It looked like after-pictures of a tornado.
But the trees stood resolute in the center of the room. Not one fruit had fallen from their branches. And on the desk beneath them, where Grace did her work, the sword glowed. The sword, usually covered with flickering green and gold flames, was now … angry. It was the only word she could use to describe what she was seeing. The green and gold flames had morphed into red and black. The metal, engraved with the words she had translated to say what the tree gives, the sword takes; what the sword takes, the tree gives was now pulsing with emotion. And coming off of the sword in waves was an otherworldly heat. The sword had always emitted a cool indifference. Now it was raging.
“Oh, God,” Grace gasped. Her breathing sped up even more, and black began to edge in on her vision.
Something had angered this inanimate object. Fear, so familiar and yet, in this case, so different, choked Grace’s throat. She had a gut feeling that in completing her job she betrayed a secret. The sword’s secret.
Someone was coming. Coming for them. Coming for her.
She had one thought before losing consciousness: What have I done?
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Also by Micah Persell:
Of Eternal Life
Praise for Of Eternal Life:
Winner of the 2013 Virginia HOLT Award of Merit in the paranormal category.
Second place in Lyrical Press's first annual "How Lyrical Is Your Romance" contest.
“If you enjoy military suspense and a strong romance try this book. Of Eternal Life is a good page turner to the end.”—Night Owl Reviews
Of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Praise for Of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:
“I give this action-packed, sexually-charged story a definite thumbs up and rate it with four stars. The author has a good series going, and I was left gasping for breath and searching for more pages. It's a great story . . . I'm glad I took the read. I can't wait to hear more.”—The Romance Reviews
Persuasion: The Wild and Wanton Edition
Praise for Persuasion:
“Micah Persell has near perfectly captured Austen’s voice and explored some of the subtle nuances of Persuasion that Austen hinted at but never ventured to pursue … As a fan of Austen retellings, I appreciated how seamlessly the additional text was worked into the classic storyline.”—The Romance Reviews
“Micah Persell exceeded [expectations] by deftly and for the most part seamlessly working in backstory, dreams, and interior monologue in very Austenesque language . . . it’s just ideal for a reader such as me—one who loves Persuasion but also can take pleasure in a talented wordsmith having a bit of fun with it.”—Romantic Historical Lovers
Emma: The Wild and Wanton Edition
Praise for Emma:
“This ‘wild and wanton’ rewrite of Jane Austen’s Emma did not disappoint...The transitions are seamless, the writing styles matched extremely well. I like to think that Austen (after getting over a bit of shock) would have welcomed these spicy, but tasteful, additions to her story. I know that I certainly did.”—4 stars, Tatooed Book Review
“...the wild and wanton version of Emma made it more accessible to a modern audience in the sense that it was similar to modern ideals of courtship. Jane's characters find relationships in the meeting of compatible minds, but the modern romance reader expects zing. The zing made me think of Emma and Harriet more as the very young women they are, and also added an extra level of complication to the story.”—4 stars, Plot Driven
“Keeping true to the voice of Jane Austen, Micah has improved upon a classic. She has made it even more romantic, if possible.” 4 stars, Unwrapping Romance
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