Book promo
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH
ON SALE RIGHT NOW: (A new section for this time period, and after when a lot of people have a lot of things for sale)
(Oh, and if you have things on sale, why haven’t you sent them in to be promoted? Allergy to money? Chafing at the thought of lucre? Hives at the idea of wealth?)
YES THE FIRST TWO ARE ABOVE IN THE PERMA PINNED POST, BUT SOME PEOPLE ARE INSUFFERABLE IN THEIR SELF PROMOTION, WHAT CAN I SAY?
Also I wish to remind everyone that you can order now on sale, and have a bunch of books delivered to your loved one’s kindle on Christmas morning and look like a big spender!
FROM SARAH A. HOYT, 1.99 TILL THE 6TH – Darkship Renegades
When you save the world, you expect a hero’s welcome.
Maybe a ticker tape parade.
Instead, Athena Hera Sinistra and her husband Kit find themselves arrested,
threatened, accused of crimes they don’t even understand.
Tyranny has seized the free world of Eden.
With Kit wounded, his life in peril, they must go to Earth and risk all to save him.
And perhaps, perhaps, to save Eden once more.
If it can be saved.
Join Thena and Kit in their desperate quest to save the world. Again.
BY ELISE HYATT — WHICH IS REALLY SARAH A. HOYT — A French Polished Murder ON SALE FOR 99C TILL THE 6TH
Old murder casts long shadows
When Dyce Dare decides to refinish a piano as a gift for her boyfriend, Cas Wolfe, the last thing she expects is to stumble on an old letter that provides a clue to an older murder. She thinks her greatest problems in life are that her friend gave her son a toy motorcycle, and that her son has become unaccountably attached to a neurotic black cat named Pythagoras. She is not prepared for forgotten murder to reach out and threaten her and everything she loves, including her parents’ mystery bookstore.
A Dyce Dare Mystery.
Originally published by Prime Crime.
The Cross-Time Kamaitachi (Timelines Universe Book 5)
I did not land here as a warrior, but a warrior I so soon became . . .
One moment, Dr. Yukiko Yamaguchi was in her high-tech singularity research lab in California, busily adjusting an electronically-leaky fitting playing hell with her instrument readings.
The next moment, she was falling through space, and landing hard in a wilderness area she would quickly discover was her family’s ancient stomping grounds in Japan – but with an apocalyptic twist.
A hundred years later, there would be legends of a great yōkai, a demon, whom some called a kamaitachi – a sort-of whirlwind, weasel-like creature with blades for claws, which catches up unwary humans and slices their skin. But this kamaitachi is no ordinary yōkai – rather, she is
The Cross-Time Kamaitachi
The Tale of the Crane Princess (Timelines Universe Book 6)
Ordinary, everyday shopkeeper Horiuchi Tsurue is running a little general store and mini-café on a small island in Japan’s inland sea, two centuries after mankind was nearly wiped out by a virus.
One day, Yamaguchi Yukiko, the kamaitachi of legend (The Cross-Time Kamaitachi), and her daughter Mikoko, appear in front of Tsurue’s shop, and she invites them in for tea.
That’s when Tsurue discovers she is anything but ordinary. And in the end, the island she is sworn to protect will depend upon it.
THE REST OF THE BOOKS!
FROM JASON HANSON: Double Track
A shocking, perfectly planned abduction. A race against time. When two cops butt heads, can they learn to work together before their case becomes murder?
Anna Harlowe dots every “i” and crosses every “t”. So when two men dressed as state troopers kidnap a beautiful crypto analyst, the smart and capable county deputy takes the assignment, determined to do everything by the book. But after a special investigator arrives to look into the dirty-cop angle, Harlowe fears her handsome but unwelcome partner will blame her if things go sideways.
James Riley isn’t a team player. Assigned to recover a kidnapping victim as quietly as possible, he’s ready to cut corners to nail the perps even if it means stepping on the toes of the attractive lead detective. And when the inquiry immediately goes sour with a hospitalized eyewitness and zero video footage, the free-wheeling lone wolf suspects an inside job.
Furious as one thing after another goes wrong, Harlowe believes the criminals are always a few steps ahead of them. And while Riley grudgingly begins to respect his associate’s steady hand, a breakthrough witness getting gobbled up by a dirty lawyer convinces him someone in their midst is sabotaging their every move.
Can they decrypt the clever ploy before they’re left with blood on their hands?
Double Track is a jaw-dropping standalone techno-thriller. If you like dogged protagonists, noir-style mysteries, and a splash of romance, then you’ll love Jason Hanson’s pulse-pounding rollercoaster ride.
Buy Double Track to plunge into danger and deception today!
FROM MONALISA FOSTER: Threading the Needle
A NEW START—OR AN OLD CALLING?
Talia Merritt, a former military sniper once known as Death’s Handmaiden, is a woman haunted by her past. Her cybernetic arm and her phantom—the implant that allows her to control it—serve as a constant reminder of what she’s lost. But Talia is hoping to leave her past and her reputation behind and start anew on the colony world of Goruden, a hardscrabble planet of frontier-minded people seeking a better life. And she’s finally earned enough to start to make that dream come true.
In the bucolic town of Tsuri, she interviews for a job as a marksmanship instructor for local bigwig Signore Ferran Contesti. But Contesi is not what he seems. A recent arrival on Goruden, he hopes to mold the colony world in his own image—an image at odds with the unencumbered life free of government and corporate meddling that Talia has come to find.
Soon, Talia finds herself thrust into the start of another conflict. Talia desperately wants to stay out of it, but she may not have that luxury.
With the fate of a planet and her own peace of mind hanging in the balance, Talia must decide whether or not to once again take up the mantle of Death’s Handmaiden. . . .
At the publisher’s request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
FROM JAMES YOUNG: Wonder No More: An Alternate Leyte Gulf
October 1944. After almost three years of titanic struggle, the United States Navy has forced their Japanese opponents into one final titanic struggle: The Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Aboard the battleship Yamato, Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki is the sole survivor of an American airstrike. With the Center Force Ugaki now commands having suffered grievous losses, the sky full of American warplanes, and an uncertain situation in front of him, no rational person criticize a retreat. Bushido, however, is not rational, nor does Japan have the luxury of seeking battle another day. The Center Force must reach the American beachhead…or die trying.
Vice Admiral Willis Lee does not understand Bushido, but he can read a map. Despite aviators’ claims to have sent the Japanese fleet fleeing, Lee is considering insubordination when an engineering casualty forces his hand. Regardless of what dawn will bring for the carriers of Third Fleet, Lee will take Task Force 34 south to guard the exit of San Bernadino Strait.
Meanwhile, the U.S.S. Johnston rides herd on a small group of aircraft carriers designated “Taffy 3” off the coast of Samar. To her captain’s disappointment, the tides of war have prevented her from participating in the unfolding battle in Surigao Strait. For Ensign Jack Murphy, things couldn’t be better. He’s happily counting down the days until the United States Navy strangles the Empire of Japan by fishing aviators out of the ocean and hunting for nonexistent submarines. Pure Fate has brought him to the Johnston, and he is ready for the fickle goddess to carry him just as safely off the destroyer’s deck when she next docks.
Unbeknownst to all three men, when dawn breaks on the 25th of October the lives of thousands will turn on their decisions. Titans will clash, with the fate of the Philippines hanging in the balance!
FROM HOLLY CHISM: Holidays and Holy Days (Modern Gods)
Hera was hard at work in her counseling office when her clients started cancelling for Thanksgiving travel. She…hadn’t realized that a) that was coming up, or b) what it actually about…until she did a little research and decided to celebrate. In the process, she learns about Christmas coming, and decides that it’s high time somebody threw Christ a birthday party.
Of course, nothing goes as planned, but when does it ever?
FROM BLAKE SMITH: An American Thanksgiving
It is Thanksgiving Day, 1865, and Margaret Browne isn’t feeling very thankful. The war is over, and her grown-up sons have returned from the fighting, but her beloved husband remains absent, last seen a captive in a notorious prisoner-of-war camp. The Browne family muddles through their uncertain path, lost without their leader, but when everything begins to go wrong all at once, Margaret must hold together the farm and her family, and turn a disaster into a true day of thanks-giving.
FROM HEATHER STRICKLER: Bearskin (To Shame The Devil Book 1)
No one beats the Devil.
Cut loose and abandoned after a losing war, Gregor seeks to bury the past and find a future. Any future.
When his own stubbornness leads to a desperate deal with the devil, Gregor must forge a new path. Can mortal man beat the Devil at his own game? And who will he drag down with him if he fails?
BY FREDERIC BROWN, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: The Screaming Mimi (Annotated): The classic pulp serial killer mystery
A drunken Irishman named Sweeney — well, to be fair, he was only five-eighths Irish, and only three-quarters drunk — made a resolution. Sticking to it took him through murder, and blood, and tracking down a sculptor on the far side of nowhere, and delivered him right up to the doorstep of a serial killer!
- This iktaPOP Media edition has a new introduction giving the book genre and historical context.
FROM CLEVE F. ADAMS, REVIVED BY D. JASON FLEMING: Too Fair To Die (Annotated): The classic hard-boiled pulp noir
Cherchez la femme, they told McBride. Find the woman. He hit the trail in the suburbs of L.A., and wound up in the heart of Montana; in the heart of a bitter, bullet-baited gubernatorial election; in the heart of the one woman he would have given his life to put behind bars.
- This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving the book historical and genre context.
FROM LINDSEY PETERSEN: The Wizards’ Duel: Magic, Technology and Justice (The Reluctant Chrononaut Adventures Book 3
Reluctant time-traveler Kate Thomason races against a self-proclaimed King of the Elves and his plots destroy Tesla’s energy-beaming towers and retrieve a powerful ancient book of magic. He would ruin the global economy, cause geological catastrophe and gain occult powers.. In her journey she partners with Mata Hari, Aleister Crowley, Arsène Lupin, and others to avenge her murdered husband and save humanity.
As Kate Cameron sat on an Ulster balcony the Tesla earth-energy broadcast tower across the strait collapsed, taking her husband Dougray down to certain death in the rocks and waters below. Kate sensed that the peculiar gentleman at the next table was somehow responsible – and she vowed to do whatever she must to avenge Dougray’s death. Since H. G. Wells abducted her from her life of ease two hundred years in the future Kate had chased the Loch Ness Monster on the Nautilus, thwarted a plot to kidnap Queen Victoria, and found love and a life with an annoying Scot in kilts. And now he was gone, and with his death all her future dreams collapse to one single point – ending the life of the man who called himself Errol Koenig. Kate trails her prey to the continent on the hypersteam train, pausing briefly in London for the devices and gear needed to hunt a killer. Along the way she meets allies in Mata Hari, Winston Churchill, Nicola Tesla, Arsène Lupin, and others, as she follows Koenig’s trail of destroyed Tesla towers to Paris, where she boards the Orient Express to close with her prey as he flees eastward. The nearer Kate gets to the man the more she feels herself falling victim to his charisma. Is this man truly the King of the Elves he proclaims himself to be? How else to account for the bewildering allure of the man she intends to kill? But wait, there’s more! Lupin claims Koenig is also a criminal mastermind, with a vast network of criminals and secret information available to mislead and mystify. Tesla worries that as his earth-power-transmitting towers are brought down, the disruption of earth’s energies will cause cataclysmic destruction. Is that part of Koenig’s plan too? To destroy modern civilization? Her simple plan to pursue and kill her husband’s murderer thrusts her into a strange world of automatons and magic as she gathers friends to save the world from a maniac, culminating atop an ancient tower in a thunderstorm. The second book in The Reluctant Chrononaut series.
FROM A. PALMER: Hope is the Second Door on the Left
Hope is the Second Door on the Left is a collection of poems centered around facing difficulties of life, directing the reader toward goodness and hope, and then attempting to describe life after hope is chosen.
We all must face such a choice in our own lives, eventually.
FROM MARY CATELLI: The Princess Seeks Her Fortune
In a land where ten thousand fairy tales come true, Alissandra knows she is in one when an encounter with a strange woman gives her magical gifts, and another gives her sisters a curse.
And she knows that despite the prospects of enchantments, cursed dances, marvelous birds, and work as a scullery maid, it is wise of her to set out, and seek her fortune.
FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Red Star, Yellow Sign
Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad.
It’s 1934, and the assassination of Sergei Kirov, Leningrad’s Communist Party chief, has rocked the Soviet Union. When an up and coming young Party official is assigned to investigate, it looks like an open and shut case.
The further Nikolai Yezhov looks into the case, the stranger things become. Mysterious entities lie beneath the swamps upon which Leningrad was founded. Because he has stumbled upon these secrets older than humanity itself, Yezhov must be eliminated. But first he must be led to commit acts that will ensure that history will forever remember him as a vicious criminal.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: YELL
According To Hoyt 
As the author, I should point out that my book The Reason is not actually on sale; I’m not sure how that got in there. It’s normally 99 cents. But I appreciate the plug along with the other two books which are on sale for 99 cents :)
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AMAZON told me it was on sale.
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SIGH. They’re broken, clearly.
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I’ll remove it. BUT THEY ASSURED ME
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It’s so annoying when Amazon LIES
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AHA. Regular IS $1.99 (it’s so short I was thinking it was 99 cents and had to go into KDP and look) but it’s not on any kind of deal/sale I authorized. I love how Amazon just “decides” books should be on sale. But Mea Culpa, I really did think it was normally 99 cents. Feel free to delete this set of comments :)
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Well, I now removed it from promo!
CRIES
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Don’t cry :) Those probably ARE the next batch to go on sale :)
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“What happened to you Hank? You look like you got hit by Troll.”
“Her name is Liz and she yelled at me” Hank said dreamily.
“Hank, you’re a Class A Titan so why would a woman yelling at you bother you” Fred responded.
“Didn’t I mention that she’s beautiful?”
“Hank, start making sense or I’ll haul you down to the Mind Healers.”
“Ok, I saw her in the Bar off base and I made a stupid pass at her. She objected and like an asshole I asked what she was going to about it. She grinned and said that she’d yell at me. I laughed and told her to do it. Next thing I knew, I was on the ground ten yards from the Bar with her grinning at me.”
“Wait a minute, you called her Liz. Did you annoy Elizabeth McDonald that new Class A Sound-Mage?”
“Yep. And since she warned me and it look like I could have a good time with her, I apologized and asked for a date next Friday so I could get to know her better.”
“Only you Hank. So what did she say?”
“She said yes, but suggested that I act more like a gentleman than like an asshole.”
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Heh, I get to pull this one straight from my files! Credit to Fuzzy for correcting my Japanese for one part. It’s slightly edited, too, possibly with worse Japanese. ;)
“That’s her?!” Aoi gasped while Vincent, Carys, and Alphonse readied their weapons. “Wow! She’s like a real life Shadow Mistress Setsuna!”
Azahara went silent at the petite engineer’s words. She paused for what felt like a full minute before her features twisted with rage and she yelled “Baa-ka! How dare you insult me so?! Do you not know Hoshiko when you see her, niña idiota?!”
“Nani?! Who’re you calling baka, baka?!” Aoi snapped, raising her rifle. “You, Hoshiko?! Puh-LEEZ! You’re mean! You’re scary! You’re always trying to kill Vinnie, Carys, and Alfie – and never can, either! That’s all! Shadow! Mistress! Setsuna! You’re totally not the Heavenly Messenger of Love and Justice! No way, no how!”
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“I am so sorry,” said Ciara, quietly.
“Necromancers slay the innocent,” said Karlos bleakly. “I had no right to expect such evil to fall on other people.”
If Karlos himself did not weep or yell over it, who else had the right? Though Autumn looked uncommonly pale, looking at him.
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Trolls were to the left of me, Trolls to the right, and directly in front of me was an army of Goblins followed by an Orc Calvary mounted on Dire Wolves.
“Help me Mister Wizard I don’t want to be a Paladin anymore” I yelled.
“Driskol Drascal Driskol Drone, time for this one to come home” Mister Wizard cast the spell.
Sheez you’d think the kid would’ve learned by now, one evil menace at a time. I haven’t this much trouble with a sage since that little shit Arthur.
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Oh. My. It’s been A While, but that was very well played!
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Trolls to the left of me
Goblins to the right
Here I am, stuck in the middle with orcs…
[With a nod to Stealers Wheel]
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Bearskin has a very nice cover, apart from the sword-blade disappearing into the shrubbery like that.
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There might be places that are better suited for secret history mysticism than Russia.
But not many.
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Was at Home Despot yesterday. Didn’t quite yell, but sure felt like it.
See, something like 98% of their power tools run off of batteries. When did that happen? Batteries suck!
Batteries run down in the middle of the job.
“You can recharge them in like 15 minutes.”
“If you’ve got power to charge batteries, you’ve got power to use normal tools.”
Batteries turn into bricks after a few years. Then you find out they don’t make batteries for your ‘obsolete’ power tools any more. They’re useless.
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That’s why I like Ryobi’s One+ line of tools. They have deliberately designed their batteries to be backward compatible all across the line. I have 20+ year old tools, that originally came with Ni-Cd batteries, that work perfectly with their newest Lithium ion batteries.
One less thing to yell about. :-)
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I feel ya. I was on business travel a couple months back, and thought I’d dart out to grab a cheap wired keyboard. You know they barely make those things anymore? The fellow at the store didn’t know why, but he guessed it might have to do with the cost of copper for the connection cable. Maybe wireless was actually cheaper to make?
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Dan loves battery power tools. I don’t.
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I’m mixed. The main cordless tool is my DeWalt 18V* drill-driver. Most screwing-around jobs use that one, though I’ve been known to haul a generator and use the heavy duty drill for big holes in tough stuff, like rail road ties in the garden. Gas engined “lawn” mowers don’t do well here (more dust and dirt than lush lawn), and I’ve mostly retired the 25 year old Black and Decker for a new Ryobi. OTOH, the B&D is good for stuff near the barn.
The drill-driver replaced a 12V Makita with obsolete batteries. That one will get tossed when I do the long-threatened barn cleanup. A Costco special (Coleman branded; it was affordable, but cheap in all senses–too-tight budget when I got it) might still be around. Looks like the next dump run could be epic.
Beyond that, I prefer corded tools and occasionally pneumatic. I use a Toro universal gas power tool for the weed wacker/mini roto-tiller/pole-saw/blower duties. The first two attachments get used the most.
Amazon shows a bunch of Lithium batteries that are made to replace the Ni-Cds or NiMH ones DeWalt makes (made? Now 2X the original prices, though.)
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Until you are somewhere where the grid ain’t. Sure, you could use an inverter and the vehicle battery, but it’s nice to be able to get home.
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Of course, there is the older cordless drill:
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I supposed I was alone on my hike, so it’s unsurprising that the yell startled me. I was more startled to discover its source: a young woman, about my age maybe, lying on her back in a bush. She was straining mightily to sit up. How did she get there?
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The young woman grasped both my offered hands, and together we were able to extricate her from the shrubbery. She appeared unhurt, but very nervous. Suddenly her eyes went wide, focused on something behind me. I wanted to turn back to look, but she grabbed my hand and yelled “RUNNNNN!”
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I ran.
She ran.
We ran. Where, I didn’t know. I just followed the young woman, who was too focused to say anything. I didn’t know what we were fleeing, but when a black steel boomerang whizzed past my head, I was ready to do some yelling of my own.
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Just as suddenly, she pulled me off the path and behind a pair of fallen logs. “Sssh!” she whispered.
“No talking. No yelling. They can’t see us now!”
Whom we were running from, and why they couldn’t see us when we could see each other, were questions I’d ask later.
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And how the crowd yelled and hollered and cheered as Liam dismounted, and the king embraced him, and asked him to present his bride to him.
Feeling very strange, Rosaleen accepted Liam’s handing her down and leading her, in her travel-stained drab gown, to his father.
He did recognize her.
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He did recognize her.
Is that good or bad? :wink:
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Good.
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And she looked up from settling her (kind of) blouse and vest over the pad he’d made (rude, but workable) of two handkerchiefs from his pocket, one none too clean. And said, looking him straight in the eye as she did, “I am eternally grateful to you, dear sir, for all your aid and kindness.”
Then went right back to re-arranging her clothes, with their new holes and fresh red stains, into their former order and place. As if she were doing no more than clearing the eating table of dishes and left-overs after one more daily breakfast or dinner.
“It was nothing, nothing more than simple first aid. I still think you’d best see a doctor, soon. That — iron dart thing, it went into your side pretty deep.” He should know, he’d been the one to pull it out of her in the jaws of a pair of pliers from the toolbox of his Model T truck. Oddly uncanny thing, that dart. Like a squat little iron arrow, but somehow… alien.
“Far more than nothing, kind sir. The dart-shot was not poisoned, but in itself poisonous; people like me are powerfully, ah, allergic to such. And the spell laid on it was cunning and rare and costly, and could’ve been quite effective.” She smiled, wry and chilling and moreso chilled. “That neither I nor anyone obligated to help me could draw it out, once lodged where it had struck, into me or anyone else. Your kindness and care for a chance-met stranger dodged neatly and blessedly round that blockade.”
“I still say I didn’t do anything more than anybody else would’ve done, on seeing someone hurt and bleeding by the side of the road. People ’round here are all raised to that, we think nothing of it.” Paused a bit. “Most of us, near all of us, the ones who’re worth a fly, at least.”
She looked up again, long dark unbound hair re-settling itself in place as she did. “But still, you made a difference. So many of my own kin, my own people, might not have done the same, not without obligation. And as I’ve said, the dire magic on that short-quarrel was set to keep all such effort in vain.” She stretched her upper body, where she still sat; and there was something in the motion and her soft sigh that twigged Ez to a thing he’d not had the wit or the time to notice earlier; she’d been in deep pain all the time before, but had been ignoring or hiding it. Much as a cat would.
And he also noticed, for the first time, that the tips of her ears seemed to be oddly (for a human being) shaped, almost as if pointed rather like a cat’s were too. Or a fox’s ears, or…
“I’ll not let any unsaid debt sit long between us, son of Adam and Eve. So I say unto you now, that as long as you live, as long as your children do or their own do, when and if you’re in true need of aid yourselves, then all you have to do is ask, is to call for it. Ask it out loud, speak your need, yell it into the night, holler it into the day, speak it with true intent and with respect and proportion softly or loudly, and in sure good time it will be yours from me and mine. You gave to a stranger with no ties of kin or obligation; I and we will give back in due proportion.”
And she smiled, open and bright as an Easter sunrise. “And I say to thee, dearest kind sir, you have no idea just how much of a — gift and a blessing you have bestowed, on me and on mine this night. We’ve not been here in this new country for long, only a mere few hundreds of years like your own people have; but it was laid on us long ago to repay any blessing with blessing and any curse with curse, and so we shall evermore.”
And the chills chased each other up and down his spine, as Ez finally fell to understanding what he’d done and — hard as it was to credit — who she was who sat there, still on his old blanket on the dusty roadside ground.
“So what are you called, dear lady? If you may say, without discomfort or price for you or between us?” Ezekial had never thought to be in any such position; and yet the tales from the Old Country (and these old mountains too) marked such a meeting no more unlikely than seeing a ghost; perhaps never common, but also surely not rare or unheard-of here.
“My name, for you and for yours at least” — and her eyes fair sparkled, as if she knew (even far more than he) what a weighty matter it was, this human-simple exchange of any name for any person at all — “is Allionara, lady of the — you would say Mountain Laurel Clan — of the Sidhe.” She said the last word with a particular foreign sound, like she but with an odd kind of soft gutteral growl at the end that reminded him a bit of the old Erse, the few scattered pieces of it he’d heard from a few old-timers.
And Ezekial couldn’t help sketching a small bow to her, a strange thing he very nearly never, ever did to any living soul.
“So you have clans, like we do and the Cherokee did before us?” Again, he found, he simply could not help himself asking what he wished to know.
“All such things come from the same place. None of your people and none of mine ever came into existence without kin. And it was laid on us, my own people so very long ago, that wherever you… sons and daughters of Adam and Eve go, across the bay or the loch or so far across the wide sea, that then and only then we shall follow and keep you company. Even here in this new and worthy land, under the hollow hills and the hidden deepnesses ‘neath the hollers, there will we be, so-oft unseen as the hunting, watching cat.”
And she looked at him, as if in invitation, not yet request. Or more than request.
“And my name is Ezekial Thorne, Allionara of the Laurels. The first name ending with ‘al’ not ‘el’ as in the written Bible, for my grandmother was one that held with the old idea a person should decide the details of the spelling of his own child’s name, within reasonableness, not some decree by some book or teacher far away.” He smiled. “We’re not rightly all of us true Highland folk; but the word comes down from my mother’s mother’s people we’re allied to the Macraes since auld lang syne.”
And again the starlight danced in her eyes, and how was it that he could be so sure it was the stars that lit them? Yet still he was. “Then you’re rightly Ezekial Thorne of the Macraes, sure enough, for as you doubtless know the clan ever follows the woman’s line as the name does the man’s.
“And as for that stubby little iron dart, there in your mason jar with the last dregs of your forbidden moonshine, bury it in consecrated ground, in it but near the edge. The mix of sanctified and unsanctified energies will draw out and bleed away its hunter’s virtue; and then the damp clean earth will soon enough rust the empty husk into final ruin.”
Amd she stood up, lightly but with an obvious effort and likely some pain, and looked at him again, in her oddly deep, far-off but intimate way.
“You ought know you’re a blessing on this allegedly-fallen world, my dear Ezekial Thorne. Never you forget to live up to that, never forget even for a moment its truth. And I’ll ne’er forget you and your deed and this night ever, not till the lands drown and the sun burns out and the stars fall.”
And Ezekial blinked, he couldn’t help doing it.
And when his eyes opened a bare moment later, he was alone again in the starry night.
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“Odd,” said Florangela. “I thought that his attacks were of star power, but I felt something of necromancy being healed.”
“What a knave!” shouted Henrik.
“There’s no need to yell,” said Florangela. “The bones themselves would warn us. Let us go and ensure that he can get no more aid.”
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Ken Redmond didn’t usually like listening to Shepardsport Pirate Radio at this hour. Maybe Spruance Del Curtin was a good DJ, but his performance down here in Engineering made him a royal pain in the keister.
And then he heard the song, and a smile came to his lips. “Now that brings back memories.”
Those days were long behind him, yet he could see the old high school as it had been back in 1983, when Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” was getting regular airplay. It had been another time and place, when today’s world would’ve been unimaginable.
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