A Picture Worth a (Literal) Thousand Words

Last October I was lucky enough to enjoy an extended weekend frolicking around New York City with a good friend. We went to see the fabulous show "Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson," eat good food, walk a bazillion miles, and even throw in a little book research.

You see, the opening chapter of TRANCE takes place in Central Park. In it, sixteen teen and tweens training to be superheroes are running from a group of bad guys. It's the final battle after years of fighting between the adults, and everything has come to a head in Manhattan.

The problem was, I had never been to Central Park, and while I'd found lots of nice photos online, it's an entirely different experience to walk the Park itself. For one thing, it's huge! And you can't really get a sense of scale without being there. So we went, and we walked, and I took lots and lots of pictures.

You can read Chapter One of TRANCE here, or you can hang around and read here, as well, complete with pictures. Unfortunately, I lack the drawing skills required to insert my characters into these photos, so the narrative action will have to suffice.

ENJOY!

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One
Central Park

The bronze man's head was melting. It oozed fat splats of liquid metal and swirled down the front of his old-fashioned suit jacket to puddle at his feet. Some of it hit the bronze duck below him, adding layers of new metal that mutated it into a nightmarish goose. The molten metal cooled and hardened as it hit the sidewalk. Mayhem's heat blasts were concentrated above the statue, and metal needs a constant heat source to stay liquid. I learned that in class.

Gage had told me the statue was of a once-famous man who wrote stories for kids. I don't know for sure, but if Gage says so, it must be true. He's in charge while the adults are fighting for all of our lives, and he kept us quiet and hidden. For a while.

Until Mayhem found our hiding place.

"We have to run for it," Gage said.

I didn't want to run. We'd been running for hours, from the southernmost point of Central Park to where we were now. I don't know how many blocks, but a lot, and it was raining, too—light, chilly rain and heavy, splattering rain. Sometimes it stopped and just blew cold wind; then Ethan would use his Tempest powers to try to redirect it so we didn't freeze.

Hours of it, and I was exhausted. We all were. Each time the Banes gained ground and pushed the last of the grown-up Rangers north, we kids ran ahead and took cover. We were there to fight if we had to, but the grown-ups didn't want us to—not until absolutely necessary. At fifteen, Gage was the oldest; I'm the youngest at ten-almost-eleven. He says we're the last line of defense for the city of New York.

We're the last line of defense for the rest of the country.

And we're just a bunch of kids.

Mayhem kept blasting.

Ethan stepped out from the shelter of the stone wall, all wiry and red-haired and cocky thirteen. He raised his hands to the sky. A blast of wind shot away from him and swirled toward Mayhem. She was a good hundred yards away, across a cement hole that had once been a lake or something, near a statue of a bronze girl on a mushroom. The statue was losing shape, turning into goo from her being so close to it.

Ethan's air blast slammed Mayhem's heat back at her. She was wearing street clothes, just jeans and a black shirt, and they were nothing like our special uniforms. No armor to protect Mayhem from her own powers or ours, so she flew backward with a piercing shriek. Her braided black hair flipped around like snakes, and she landed out of sight on the other side of the mushroom.

"Go!" Gage shouted.

Mellie ran first, as fast as she could across the cement ground, toward the nearest clutch of unburned trees. Renee went next, a streak of blue skin and honey-blond hair, with William behind her. He carried Janel, who was unconscious from power overload; William had superstrength so he could run and carry her at the same time, while I could barely run and carry myself.

I followed the big kids, including Marco, who was still in panther form, and fifteen of us streaked across the way, rounding the edge of the cement pit, seeking our next place to hide. Just like we'd done all day. My lungs were burning, aching with smoke and cold and overuse and unshed tears. I just wanted to curl up in a ball and cry myself to sleep. I was sick of being cold. I didn't want to be afraid anymore. I didn't want to have to think about tomorrow—if we had a tomorrow.

I was only ten. Almost eleven. I wasn't ready to die.

None of us was.

Mellie sure wasn't when one of Mayhem's heat blasts caught her full in the face and melted her skin down to her bones. Mellie didn't even get to scream. I screamed plenty. So did Renee and Nate and William. Only panther-Marco paused long enough to sniff her, then loped past.

Ethan cried out, and then he wasn't running with the group anymore. I didn't stop to see what happened, but a few seconds later, Mayhem shouted again. This time, the roar of wind was louder. I hoped he tossed her into a tree or something.

We left poor Mellie on the ground and kept going, like we'd left three others behind already. My jelly legs didn't want to keep running, and one by one the older kids moved ahead of me. Toward the trees and the promise of safety somewhere else. I'd get left behind and it wouldn't matter. My powers were stupid; I couldn't help in a fight. My ability to hypnotize people and alter their thoughts worked only if I looked them in the eye. That was hard to do in the middle of a war zone. I hadn't done anything today but cry and scream and get in the way.

Not like my dad, Hinder, one of the greatest heroes in the Ranger Corps. He was fighting south of us with the last half dozen grown-up Rangers, keeping the horde of Banes (sixty-something of them, Gage had said) from overrunning us. We were kids training to be heroes. If our parents and mentors died, how did anyone expect us to stop them?

We could barely save ourselves from one Bane with a superheat blast. Once the line fell and the Banes got through, sixty-something of them would crush us in seconds.

No, the line couldn't fall. Not with my dad in charge. He'd save us.

A hand grabbed my arm and yanked me forward. I nearly tripped. Gage didn't let go as we ran; he was practically pulling me along. It was as close as we'd ever come—or ever would—to holding hands. I'm still a baby and he's a teenager. He's just helping me because he's in charge. He can't let me lag behind.



We found a wide path. It took us under a stone archway and we emerged onto an open lawn. If it was ever green, it was now brown and rutted and overrun here and there with clumps of dried weeds. A lot of Central Park looked like that now. After New York City's first major battle in the War, most of the city had been evacuated and a lot of the buildings destroyed. I'd seen it from the helicopter that brought us here this morning—burning, crumbling skyscrapers, gutted old theaters, debris in the empty streets. William had pointed at a tall, skinny building called the Empire or something, and said it used to be twice as tall. I didn't believe him.

Manhattan was a good place to fight, we were told. Early evacuation meant fewer civilian injuries. One of the major rules of the Ranger Corps code is protect civilians at all costs. Even the dumb ones who stand there and scream, instead of getting out of the way.

I once overheard Gage's mentor, Delphi, say that any civilian who didn't get out of the way of battling Metas was too stupid to save. It had made the other adults laugh. I didn't know why it was funny, and I couldn't ask her to explain it. I shouldn't have been listening in the first place. But Delphi was smart, so it had to be important. She'd mentored a lot of kids who didn't have anyone to teach them about their powers and how to be a Ranger. If I'd been an orphan like Gage, I'd have liked Delphi to be my mentor, too.



No one else attacked us on the lawn, but it was too open. Gage changed our direction, sideways instead of across the lawn. It felt like forever before we hit the cover of trees again. In the distance, peeking through the crisping, late summer leaves, was the turret of a big stone building.

"Head toward the castle," Gage yelled toward the front of the line. William and Renee altered their path just a little. We passed what had once been a pond of some kind, and soon we were all going up.

"Can we hide there?" I gasped. The cold and wet made my lungs burn.

"I think so."



Somewhere south of us, something exploded. It sounded like a truck got dropped from the sky and hit another one on the ground. I felt the rattle of it in my bones. Gage looked over his shoulder. I couldn't. Every ounce of my attention was on not falling over my own tired feet.



We went up a set of stone steps. The paths intersected at the top and seemed to go off in four different directions. To our left was the castle—a stone building that had so far avoided complete destruction and shone like a hopeful beacon. Thick, round stones made a sort of patio that led to the castle itself, and it had two fancy pavilions on the left and right of the steps we came up. Except for a few blown-out windows, the castle was intact. Past it, farther to the north, was something that looked like an outdoor theater surrounded by bony winter trees.

A figure emerged from the castle, and everyone ahead of us came to a clumsy, jumbled halt. Gage let me go and jogged to the front to see. I sidled closer to Renee, who stretched one blue arm out to grasp me around the shoulders. She was twelve, almost a teenager, and my best friend. I loved her Flex power that let her bend and twist into funny lengths and shapes. It was a useful power, too. When we first got here, she'd used it to yank me out of the way of Mayhem's heat blast.

"You gotta keep up, T," Renee said. Her teeth chattered and, instead of red, the cold made her cheeks look purple. "Can't lose you, too."

"I'm trying," I replied.



"Who are you?" Gage asked the stranger. His voice was still changing, going unpredictably from high-pitched to deep in timbre, so it squeaked a little when he tried to be bossy. Like now.

I peeked around William's bulk—twelve and almost six feet tall—to get a better look.

A dirty man in ragged clothes was leaning hard against the stone wall. His face was sunken and filthy, and he probably stank, if the look on Gage's face said anything. All five of Gage's senses were hypersensitive and picked up on all sorts of things. Something about the stranger, other than being homeless and in our hiding place—was bothering Gage.

"Sir, you shouldn't be here," Gage said. "It isn't safe."

"Nowhere's safe from your kind nowadays," the man said. His voice was slurred, thick, like he was both drunk and half asleep. He wouldn't look up from some interesting spot on the stone. Loose, torn clothing hung limply, covering his hands and feet, as if he'd shrunk inside them.

"There's a battle moving this way. You can't stay here."

The man shrugged.

Another explosion, similar to the first, rocked the ground. It was closer this time, louder. One of the younger boys whimpered. Panther-Marco stalked around the group to stand sentry next to Gage and hissed at the man. The two boys with the best noses knew something was wrong.

Nate's voice rang through all of our heads as his telepathic warning blared like a neon sign: Back up and get out of—

The stranger raised his right hand as he looked up. His sunken eyes glowed with yellow-orange power as he fired the little revolver in his hand, creating chaos.

Her arm still around me, Renee practically dragged me toward the larger pavilion. We all fled there while three more shots were fired. I couldn't see for the flurry of moving bodies. I didn't know where Gage was. Someone was screaming about Nate.

At the back of the pavilion, more stone steps led down to a rocky surface that overlooked the dried-up pond. We crouched there, using what little cover our hiding place provided. Fear clutched me colder than the January freeze, but I still glanced up and around a stone column, heart kicking against my ribs, a bitter taste in my mouth.

Nate was dead on the ground, a hole in his chest. The homeless man looked on, his eyes glowing death, smug like a Bane. He threw back his head and laughed—it might have been scarier if he weren't so hoarse.

Nearby, under the pavilion and behind a stone wall, William was bleeding at the hip. Down on the rock floor with us, Ethan was shot in the left shoulder. Both were panting, trying to be brave and to not cry. I looked away before I started crying, too.

"We're ending this tonight!" the man shouted. "Your pathetic Rangers are falling as we speak. You'll see your parents in hell soon enough."

I shivered.

"Specter," Gage said, and I jumped at the sound of his voice right beside me.

It couldn't be Specter, the leader of the Banes. My dad said he was the one who'd rallied them together and initiated the War that had raged and ruined the country, killed hundreds on both sides, and left Metas nearly extinct. The last surviving Metas in the world had descended on Central Park to fight each other today. Dad said Specter could possess anyone who was unconscious or had a weak mind—take them over like a puppeteer, and make them do whatever he wanted.

Specter had found a man with a gun who could cut us kids down as surely as superpowers had taken five of us since the morning.

He strode out to the middle of the stone patio, gun raised but pointed nowhere. We didn't have a lot of cover, crowding low on the cold stone steps and behind two columns and two bits of waist-high stone wall. The wounded were now in the rear, the most powerful in the front. I was somewhere in the middle beside Gage, whose hands were shaking. His lips were pressed together so tight I couldn't see them. He looked like he wanted to barf all over the ground.

He was terrified.

Gage couldn't be terrified. He had to lead us, tell us what to do so we survived this.

"Gage?" I said.

He didn't look at me. He scrubbed a hand through his spiky blond hair, down over his face, then clenched it in front of his blue jumpsuit. Tugged and pulled at the material.

I tried again. Maybe my powers couldn't save us, but I could help him save us. "Gage?"

He just wasn't paying attention to me, like usual, so I grabbed his hand and gave it a solid yank. He looked at me then, his dark eyes flecked with little bits of silver that made them look like a starry night sky. As soon as I caught his gaze, I locked in and let my Trance powers do the rest.

You're a brave man, Gage. You wouldn't be our leader if you weren't brave. We need you to lead us. We need you to save us. You can do this.

Tears glistened in his eyes. I felt him fighting it, fighting the Trance, the urge to do anything I told him. Being scared was easier—I knew it and so did he. I forced a little more at him, as much as I could muster through my own terror.

Trust me.

His hands stopped shaking. He was calming down, bucking up, accepting my influence. My own fear lessened a little, but not enough. I wished I could Trance myself.

Trust me, Gage, and lead us. Save us.

The Specter-host took three more potshots. Someone screamed—I couldn't look, didn't want to know. Didn't want to see any more of my classmates hurt or dying or dead. A third explosion, horrifyingly close, sent a blast of hot air scorching across the pavilion, layered with the stink of smoke and ash. And something burning sweet.

Death was coming closer.



"Angela, I need a distraction," Gage said, breaking our lock. He moved away, toward a blond girl who could leave up to twelve copies of herself behind as she walked, like holographic bread crumbs. "Marco, raven form."

Nearby I heard the funny, wet-Velcro sound Marco made when he shifted. The large black bird hopped over to Gage and waited for orders.

"I can still help," Ethan said. He was sweating, so pale his freckles looked like pimples, his uniform front soaked with blood.

Gage whispered a plan I couldn't hear while our attacker shot at us twice more, exploding stone and cement, in no hurry to kill us all. Or he was waiting for something.

"Ready?" Gage asked. The other big kids nodded. They all turned, prepared with their plan.

An energy orb slammed into the Specter-host and spun him around—but it wasn't from any of us. He squeezed off a wild shot that shattered the stone near Gage's head, and then the dirty man fell facedown on the cobblestones. The cold rain started falling harder.

A hunched, bleeding figure shambled toward us from around the stairs. Her white hair was stained red, plastered to her skull, and she looked a hundred years old. Gage and Angela ran out to help her, and they practically carried the old woman into the pavilion. She was bleeding from a dozen wounds, her hands and knees scraped from multiple falls. I saw her face and started to cry.

"Granny Dell," I said, shouldering my way through the older kids. I dropped to my knees next to my maternal grandmother, confused and horrified. She shouldn't be here. She'd retired forty years ago, long before I was born, and had lived my entire lifetime in Europe. We'd only met once, but had chatted on the phone dozens of times. She told me stories about my mom, who I didn't remember much.

And now Granny Dell was in Central Park. I'd heard the grown-ups say that everyone was being called to duty, but I had never imagined they meant my grandmother.

She turned weepy eyes toward me, like someone so desperately tired she wanted to burst out crying. I couldn't stop my own tears from falling, or the desperate sobs that hurt my chest.

"You kids need to go," she gasped. She was trying so hard. "They're coming. He's coming."

"We have wounded," Gage said behind me. "We can't leave them."

"Have to, son. You kids … you're the last. Have to live."

"We're not," I said. "Dad's still fighting. He'll save us." Her sad, sad face told me something about my dad I didn't want to know. My lungs hitched. I ignored her face. If I ignored her, it simply wasn't true.

"They'll be here soon, Teresa," Granny Dell said. "You have to run. Hide."

"Rangers don't hide." Dad taught me that. All I wanted to do was hide until the bad guys went away, but we couldn't. If we hid from the Banes now, we'd never live it down later. Unless we died after all.

Was it better to die a hero or live a coward?

I didn't know. All I knew was that I wanted to live.

Granny Dell choked up blood and stopped breathing. I kept holding her hand, afraid that if I let go, I'd run and hide just like she wanted me to, find a tree to climb or a hole to burrow into and stay there until the battle was over.

"We stand here," Gage said, rising up and addressing us like a general. Still brave, still saving us. Not giving up. "The man out there was right. It comes down to what we do tonight. We have to make our parents and mentors proud."

They were all talking at once, a buzz of voices and sounds and movements, and situating those who were too hurt to fight in the back of the pavilion, down in that rock-bottom hiding place. Forming a defensive line based on powers. Someone dashed outside to retrieve the gun. No one would use it; they just couldn't leave it lying around for a Bane to pick up. I stayed in the rear with the wounded and the dead, too cold and scared to help. I was useless.

Again.

An agony-filled shriek rose up from the trees surrounding the south side of the castle, carried on a wind that brought more of that awful roasted-sweet odor. Female scream, I thought, unable to think of the other adult Rangers who'd been left. I couldn't think of anyone except my dad, hurt, maybe … No. Just hurt. Or still battling his way toward us, leading his Rangers as only he could. Hinder would save us.

Renee and William stood together. I was surprised that William could be shot and still standing. He was strong. I thought he had a good power, just like Renee. But he didn't like her ability to stretch her blue body out like taffy. He said it was creepy, and she loved to torment him. Seeing them together was weird.

Marco was back in panther form. He paced the length of the pavilion, thick tail swishing, a predator. He told me once he'd rather be a big cat than a person. I didn't understand, but I was always jealous of his being a shapeshifter.

Even hurt, Ethan was waiting to help. He had one of the strongest powers among us, and he knew it. He was being brave. Everyone was being brave, except me. Might as well only be eleven of us left, instead of twelve.

Stupid, useless Trance.

The castle's spire exploded. Fire and rock blasted outward and rained down on the cobblestones in front of the pavilion. Some of us shrieked. I know I did. A second blast took out the rest of the turret. Smoke choked me and stung my eyes. Gage was shouting orders.

The first Bane crested the stairs at the far end of the stone patio. I didn't know her. Just saw her stop, locate us, then let out an excited war whoop. Terror hit me like a blast of fire all over my body as more Banes joined her.

The heat of the fire increased to all-over agony. This wasn't fear. Something was happening. Marco screamed, a too human sound. Everything went gray, and then the agony swallowed me whole.

© 2011 Kelly Meding

Excerpt 2: As Lie the Dead

Seven weeks and counting until AS LIE THE DEAD hits shelves! I admit, I'm on pins and needles waiting for reviews. Second books always seem to carry more expectations than first books, and I really hope AS LIE delivers for you guys. I absolutely adore some of the new characters in this book, and I think at least one of them will capture your attention (*cough*wingedhawtness*cough*).

So to further entice you, here's the rest of Chapter One. I posted an excerpt several weeks ago that you can find here.

Enjoy!




Yeah, not my fault. Maybe if I said that a few more times, I'd even believe it.

The Hunters and Handlers continued collecting bodies as the sun inched higher into the morning sky, turning purples and crimsons into pinks and golds. The odor of rot intensified as the cool morning gave way to warmth. A different sort of body pile was rising near our Jeep—six dead Hunters, each carefully covered with a cotton blanket. While fewer in number, those losses hit much harder. Adding in the death of Rufus's entire Triad team yesterday, we had lost forty percent of our trained forces.

The battle had ultimately lasted only an hour, but the effects would be felt for a long time—not only among the Triads but also among the many species that inhabited both the city and the surrounding mountains. The goblins—a scavenger species that spent more time in the city's sewers and subterranean tunnels than aboveground—had shown their manipulative hands by joining forces with Halfies and openly attacking us. They'd be hunted mercilessly for it. The Halfies—not fully vampire but no longer fully human—had no real power other than as thugs and roving street gangs, but someone had managed to keep them organized long enough to cause serious carnage tonight.

Their collective status had just gone from Irritant to Public Enemy Number One.

The Triads could handle the goblins and Halfies. We'd been doing it for years, in secret, keeping the existence of such creatures from the general public. No, it was the orchestrator of their activities that had the potential to cause the most upheaval. The Fey Council, humanity's largest champion, had been betrayed by one of their own—an elf named Tovin, one of the very few elves known to exist. He had tried to release a demon into our world by transplanting the thing's consciousness into Wyatt. We'd stopped Tovin and trapped the demon.

Temporarily trapped. Amalie, Queen of the sprites, would likely send someone along shortly to collect the lemon-sized onyx crystal the demon had hardened into, for proper storage and disposal. She'd given me the magic spell to stop the demon; I trusted her to handle it from here.

But perhaps the most important outcome of tonight's battle was that the Triads had found a tentative ally in the vampires—something I'd never expected three days ago from a species who did their collective best to ignore us and, when they didn't, looked down their noses at us. It was an alliance that sprang out of more than just a unified view that all Halfies should be wiped out, only I couldn't put my finger on the more.

And I was too exhausted to worry about it now. "Let's just get the hell out of here," I said.

"You going to file an official report on this, Truman?" Baylor asked.

Wyatt snorted. "Are you offering me my job back?"

"Not mine to offer, but you had a huge part in this. Once a Handler, always a Handler, right?"

"Yeah." That time he seemed to mean it.

I grabbed Wyatt's wrist and tugged him away. He came without further prompting, seemingly as ready to get out of there as I was.

"Stone!"

Christ, what now?

Gina Kismet jogged over from the direction of the pavilion opposite the Visitors' Center and pulled to a dead stop in front of us, not even out of breath. Her left leg was bandaged, red already seeping through, but the red-haired, pint-sized Handler seemed unbothered by the wounds. She held out a black cell phone; I eyed it.

"Instinct tells me this isn't over," she said.

"Me, too."

"Then take this, just in case."

I did, slipping it into the rear pocket of my jeans. "Thanks."

"We'll see you."

"Undoubtedly."

She wandered back, already barking orders at someone else. I didn't know her well but decided then that I liked her. Ballsy and strong, like a Hunter—only not. Flaming red hair disappeared among the remaining figures, though I knew I'd see her again. Probably a lot sooner than I wanted.

Last night, Wyatt and I had come in via the forest, but we decided on a more convenient route back to our hidden car. Several dozen yards down the potholed access road, barely halfway back to the main road, he started laughing. I stopped in the middle of the leaf-strewn pavement and stared at him. He waved one hand at me, not overcome, just privately amused at something in his own head. I glared at him, waiting for an in on the joke.

"I was just thinking," he said. "Here we are walking a mile back to the car when you could probably teleport us both in less than a second."

I hadn't even considered using my newfound Gift to get us back. It would take time to orient to it, just as it would take time to orient to the fact that I'd just taken full possession of my current body. A week ago, I'd been tortured to death by goblins. Three days ago, I'd been resurrected into the body of Chalice Frost, recently deceased via suicide. Less than two hours ago, the magical bargain that gave me only a three-day afterlife had been broken in a flurry of memories and physical sensations. Permanent possession of someone's body apparently also came with the memory of that body's life experiences.

Weird didn't even begin to cover it.

Wyatt and I had also stumbled onto the fact that, unbeknownst to her, Chalice had a Gift. A direct tether to the Break—the source of magic for the world. Only a handful of humans possessed that tether, giving each a unique Gift. Wyatt's was summoning inanimate objects; Chalice's—now mine—was teleportation. I just needed to learn to use it better.

"Not this morning, pal," I replied. "I'm barely over teleporting three people through the force field Tovin put around the Visitors' Center; I haven't slept more than a few hours at a time since, oh, I was dead; and I'm so hungry I could close down a buffet house. I'm done teleporting for the immediate future. Come to think of it, I'm done doing a lot of things for the immediate future."

"Like?"

I started walking again. A gentle breeze swirled from behind, bringing with it the acrid odor of burning things. Not sweet like charred meat but heavy and oily. Disgusting.

"I'm exhausted, Wyatt," I said. "Mentally, physically, emotionally, and any other l-y you want to toss into the mix. I just want to find a motel in the middle of nowhere and sleep for a week. Then take a long, hot bath and sleep for another week."

"And after you've slept for two weeks?" he asked, from somewhere behind me. A second, unvoiced question followed, hinting at the one thing I'd left off my list—him, sharing in these activities.

Maybe after the first week of sleep, I'd have the stamina to contemplate my new Evy/Chalice supercombo existence and his place in it. Part of me wanted to haul him into that hypothetical motel and physically celebrate surviving the battle until we were exhausted and sore. But fear of my reaction to him the last time we'd attempted intimacy kept sex firmly out of my near-future plans. My new body may have given me a physical distance from the memories of being tortured and raped by a goblin, but Wyatt was right—three days was nowhere near enough time to process it all. With my deadline over, I had time to figure out this thing I felt for Wyatt. The attraction had started in Chalice and been fueled by my memories of him, and it was now something entirely its own.

Something I was unable to articulate.

I'd figure out how to articulate it later. "After I've slept for two weeks, maybe I'll use this cell phone to give Kismet a call and make sure the world hasn't gone to hell in a handcart while I've been asleep."

"Hell seems pretty keen on crossing the Break."

"Well, Tovin's dead, the Tainted is contained, and the Fair Ones still guard First Break. I'd say their chances of getting across are looking pretty damned bleak, wouldn't you?"

"Sure, until someone else decides to take over where Tovin left off."

I sped up my pace, unable to outrun the stench of the bonfire that was raging out of sight. "There's always been someone trying to unite the species against us, Wyatt."

"Before Tovin, no one ever actually got them to do it. Especially the goblins, who are notorious for not playing well with others."

I didn't want to admit that he had a good point. Saying it would give his point power, and I was sick of others lording power over me. Sick of being spun around, manipulated, and used. The Triads had done it, Wyatt had done it, and Tovin had done it. No more.

"Hey, look at me."

He grabbed my left wrist. My stomach clenched. I pivoted, twisting my wrist at the same time, then ducked and spun around behind him, effectively bending his arm backward and up against his own back.

"Do not grab me," I said in his ear.

"I'm sorry."

I let go and stepped back, breathing hard for no good reason. Not like that little defensive move had winded me. No, it was the damned adrenaline pumping through me. My heart hammered as my body caught up to my brain. His grabbing my wrist should not have caused such a reaction. Of course, maybe it wasn't my reaction at all.

I had a lot of Chalice Frost to sort through while my brain became acclimated to her residual memories. Taking permanent residence in a dead woman's body was going to require some getting used to. Especially a woman dead by her own hand. My entire life was about not giving up no matter the agony or overwhelming odds. Chalice had killed herself rather than face the figurative demons fueling her depression. I knew now it was rooted in her undiscovered Gift, but she hadn't. She just gave up.

I wanted nothing to do with it. But did embracing her attraction to Wyatt mean embracing her fatal weakness, too? If I couldn't have one without the other…it wasn't in me to give up. Not the me that was Evy Stone.

"I really don't want to talk about this, Wyatt," I said. "I don't want to talk about Tovin, or the Fey Council, the goblins, the Bloods, or anything else that isn't related to me getting some time off from this unholy shit storm called my second life."

"You can't ignore it forever, Evy," he said as he turned to face me.

"I'm not planning to ignore it forever. Just for the immediate future."

"You also going to ignore Chalice for the immediate future?"

"Kind of tough to do now, wouldn't you say?"

"I don't know. You haven't exactly been forthcoming with the details of what happened when I died."

I looked at the ground, wishing he'd stop saying that. Stop talking about dying so casually—it was my routine, not his. Maybe Wyatt's death had broken the resurrection deal and allowed me to live, but the healing crystal I'd accepted from an elderly gnome named Horzt almost hadn't worked. We'd almost lost.

A single finger touched the bottom of my chin and pressed. I let him raise my head high enough to stare right into his coal black eyes. Full of curiosity and pain and life. And deep down, probably so as not to scare me, love. Not the platonic love of a Handler for his longtime Hunter but the love of a man who'd willingly exchanged his soul to give me a second chance at life.

The kind of love I wanted to return and couldn't. At least, not physically. Not until I reconciled Chalice's past with my own. "You really want to know what happened when you died?" I asked.

"Yes."

"My heart shattered in my chest. Metaphorically. Happy now?"

He made a strangled sound in his throat, caught between a gasp and a cry.

"About five seconds later," I continued, "I saw a blinding gray light, had about a thousand different memories flash through my mind, felt a hundred unfamiliar sensations all over my body, and nearly combusted when I realized how powerful my connection to the Break had become."

My new body's Gift of teleportation had been strengthened by this connection, in turn strengthening me. In the instant Chalice and I had finally became one entity, my perspective had changed. My senses had altered. The world wasn't quite the same shade as it had been two hours ago. I didn't know what sort of residual "self" remained behind when a body died, but bits of Chalice had made themselves at home in my brain.

"You saw her memories?" Wyatt asked.

"Some of them, I think, but it's not like how I remember my life. More like emotions and sensations attached to events. Growing up and feeling like an outsider, how she felt about Alex."

God, what about Alex? Chalice's best friend had given his life to help me. I knew nothing about his family, his job, his friends. People in his life would be wondering where he'd disappeared to. They'd want answers. I certainly couldn't tell them he'd been turned into a half-breed vampire, and that I'd shot him in the head to put him out of his misery.

Grief tightened my throat. My eyes watered. I bit the inside of my cheek—no more tears. I had to keep it together.

Wyatt's hand drifted to my shoulder and squeezed. I reached up, twined my fingers with his, and smiled.

"We should keep going," I said. "It's still a long walk back."

I knew him well enough to see how much he held back—the things he wanted to say or do, and didn't. "Okay," he said.

We reached the main road and continued along the shoulder. No cars passed this early in the morning, and we arrived at our hidden (stolen) car a few minutes later. The gas station was just waking up, its neon "Open" sign blazing orange in the window. I smelled bitter coffee—the kind you buy only when no other option presents itself and it's down to overbrewed sludge or falling asleep at the wheel.

My stomach grumbled. Too bad. We were both slathered in blood—human and other. The clerk would call the police before we got five steps inside the door.

"We'll have to ditch this car soon," I said once we were back on the road to the city. The guy we stole it from should be waking up soon—if he hadn't already—and reporting the incident. Regular cops knew nothing about the Triads, and I didn't like the idea of spending the day in a holding cell.

"We also need to figure out where we're going," Wyatt said. "A motel's a good idea, but we need food and fresh clothes."

"What about the were-cat's apartment? The one we stayed in a few days ago?"

He shook his head, slowing the car for an approaching intersection. We were coming out of the forest, into the outskirts of the city, and the road expanded into four lanes. "He'll be back in town today."

"Damn." It was my best idea. "I don't suppose they kept our old place on Cottage?"

"It was the first place the Triads ransacked when you went rogue."

Figured. The two-bedroom apartment on Cottage Place was a hole, but it had been home for the last four years. I'd inherited the closet-sized single room from the dead Hunter I replaced, while Jesse and Ash bunked in the moderately larger second room. It was big enough for sleeping in and close enough to Mercy's Lot for convenience hunting. I hadn't been back since the night before my partners were killed. It never seemed necessary. I had no personal possessions to collect, nothing sentimental to mourn.

Maybe it was why I kept the cross necklace close. I reached into my back pocket and pulled it out. A smudge of blood darkened one corner of the silver cross, but the words etched on the back—"Love Always, Alex"—were still visible. A little piece of her and a little piece of him.

"It's a safe place to rest for a while," Wyatt said.

My head snapped sideways. He was right, and I hated it. I didn't want to go back to the apartment Alex and Chalice had shared; I just didn't see much of a choice. The Triads knew about it, but now that we were on their side again, we didn't have to worry about a sneak attack. Kelsa knew me as Chalice, but she was dead—no reason to think the goblins had a clue. Isleen and her Bloods had no reason to attack us.

"What if Alex told the Halfies who he was?" I asked as I put on the necklace. "They could know about the apartment."

"Most of them are dead, Evy."

"The patio door is busted out."

"Then we won't stay long. But frankly, it's our best option."

"Fine."

The city passed by in a familiar blur. South into Mercy's Lot, then west on the Wharton Street Bridge, and into the nicer neighborhoods of Parkside East. I directed him to the correct block, more out of some strange instinct than actual memory. Chalice knew this place; it was part of her. The first time I was here, three days ago, I'd felt uneasy in the clean, wealthy surroundings. Coming back today felt natural. Like home.

I pointed out the building when we passed—just another apartment complex with clean walls, decorated balconies, and underground parking structures. Wyatt drove around the block and down an alley between the freestanding buildings. He parked near a row of Dumpsters. We wiped the car down before we exited.

"We're going to attract some attention," I said. The neighborhood was waking up around us, more and more cars emerging onto the road for their commute into the city. I joined him in front of the parked car.

Wyatt looked at his shirt, one sleeve dirty white and the other dark red. "Maybe we'll start a trend."

"Or a panic. Her apartment's a block away, on the fifth floor."

"You could—"

"I'm not teleporting us."

"You may have to anyway, once we get to the door."

I tilted my head. "And why's that?"

"Do you have keys?"

My hands went to my pockets. I hadn't had Chalice's keys since… Well, I wasn't sure. Two days ago, when I returned to her apartment to ask Alex for help, I let myself in with her keys. After that? "I must have put them down in the apartment. Shit." I spun and slammed my heel against the car's fender. It scuffed but didn't dent. I didn't feel any better for it.

"It's not the car's fault, Evy."

"It's nobody's fault, right? It just happened."

His eyebrows furrowed. "What the hell—?"

Metal screamed and squealed. Glass shattered, tinkled to the ground, and pinged off nearby metal. Rubber popped; air hissed. Bits of debris hit my left arm and cheek. Wyatt grunted and we fell sideways, away from the noise. Pavement scraped my other elbow.

Something heavy had landed on the car. I looked up at a male figure, semi-backlit by the lightening morning sky. He stood on the sunken roof of the car, back straight and arms by his sides. Tall, lean, and muscular, in jeans and shoes and nothing else. I stared, my mouth falling open as two new shadows fell across us.


Shadows cast by his twelve-foot wingspan.

Excerpt: As Lie the Dead

Just in time for Teaser Tuesday (which I've seen all across the blog-o-sphere, but never actually participated in), I found an excerpt from Chapter One of AS LIE THE DEAD posted on the Random House website.



It's about the first half of the chapter. The entire first chapter will available in the near future, I'm sure. But for now, enjoy the tease!

^*^

Chapter One


Friday, 5:56 a.m.

Deep red bled into the predawn sky above the defunct Olsmill Nature Preserve, and I didn’t want to be around when the sun fully rose above the mountain treetops. Once sunlight hit the plethora of vampire and Halfie bodies strewn around the sea of pavement that surrounded the preserve’s Visitors’ Center, it was game over. I’d smelled burning vampire bodies—acrid and heavy, like scorched rubber. More than forty corpses littered the ground, victims of last night’s semi-epic battle.

They’d smell it in the city all day.

I wandered away from the grisly mess, back toward the line of Jeeps that created a barrier between the carnage and the dense forest, past the human Hunters collecting goblin corpses for the bonfire. I wanted out before they lit that, too. Even dead and rotting as they were, just the sight of the hunched, oily-skinned goblin warriors set my skin crawling.

Voices on the forest side of the Jeep trickled over.

“. . . you see how she got them inside the Visitors’ Center?”

“People can’t teleport. That’s impossible.”

“Can’t come back from the dead, either, but she did.”

“Like a friggin’ zombie or something.”

“She moves too fast to be a zombie.”

I was being discussed. Not surprising. How often did a Dreg Bounty Hunter get brought back from the dead, lead an attack on a possessed elf, discover she could teleport, and continually heal from wounds that would kill any regular human being? We lived in a city where magic existed, where teenagers were recruited to kill the beasts of nightmares, and the only way those guys could understand my existence was to go Romero on me?

Terrific.

The two gossipers shuffled to my side of the Jeep, carrying a goblin corpse between them. They froze when they saw me. I knew their faces but not their names. Each Triad unit consisted of three Hunters, with each unit working independently of one another and overseen by a trained Handler. Handlers kept in contact with other Handlers, but anonymity among Hunters protected us from attack by our enemies.

Today’s mass battle in the mountains north of the city was the first time I’d seen more than three Triads in one place, ever.

I narrowed my eyes at the pair and lowered my voice to a guttural growl. “Mmm, brains.”

The taller of the two grunted, his thickly lashed eyes going wide. His companion, shorter by several inches and with skin the color of strong coffee, snorted. He seemed the most familiar, and it finally struck me where I’d seen him before—Burger Palace. He belonged to a Handler named Rhys Willemy and had helped arrest my own Handler two days ago.

Huh.

They continued carrying their burden toward the bonfire pit to add more organic fuel to what was sure to be a disgusting fire. As they wandered off to collect the next corpse, I was glad I wasn’t required to help with cleanup.

Probably my reward for, you know, stopping the bad guy and keeping a demon from running amok.

I turned my attention back to the sprawl of dead things in front of me. My target hadn’t been collected. Kelsa’s broken body had shriveled from blood loss. The fuchsia liquid gelled on the blacktop around the goblin Queen to create a kind of paste. It squelched around my sneakers, which were already stained with blood and dirt. I breathed through my mouth, but it didn’t help. The cloying seawater stench was thick enough to taste.

The goblins would be furious when they learned of her death. I knew little about the specific hierarchy within hidden goblin society, but Kelsa was a rare and revered female. She’d led a horde of warriors. She had orchestrated the goblins’ end of Tovin’s plan to summon a demon. She had power within the goblin ranks. And I had killed her—payback for killing me last week. It was only a matter of time before they regrouped and came after me.

Again.

“Evy?”

I did a careful one-eighty in the puddle of blood. Wyatt Truman—my Handler and the man who’d almost become a demon suit—walked across the pavement toward me, and I nearly tackled him with another hug. Nearly. One sleeve of his shirt was stained red, darkening as it dried—a constant reminder of how I’d felt an hour ago when he’d been shot with an anticoagulant bullet and had died in my arms. A constant reminder, also, of the power of the gnome healing magic that had brought him back to me.

“How’re those?” he asked, pointing at my stomach.

My hand went to the torn, soaked fabric of my T-shirt. Below it, scabbed slash marks were slowly healing—gifts from my throw-down with Kelsa. An inch deeper and she would have gutted me, and I doubted my healing ability could have saved me from having my intestines stomped all over the blacktop. An ability I seemed to have retained, even though my three days were up. The bite on my ankle, the cuts on my cheek, and other gashes across my torso and legs were also healing, creating an itchy sensation not unlike rolling in dry grass.

“I’ve had worse,” I replied. “You ready to get out of here? Sun’ll be up soon.”

“Yeah, there was just one thing I wanted to do first.”

“Which is?”

Another pair of Hunters strode past us. One walked with his shoulders slumped, head turned away. Wyatt reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. The kid stopped and looked up. I saw his swollen lip an instant before Wyatt’s fist slammed into his nose. The kid squealed and stumbled backward, hands covering his face. Blood streamed between his fingers and down his chin.

“Wyatt,” I said. He glared at me and I glared right back. Like I cared if he punched that little shit in the nose. “I already did that.”

Wyatt shrugged. “Hey, you got to kill the bitch who killed you. Give me something here.”

“You have a good, if somewhat morbid, point.”

“You broke my nose,” the kid who’d fired that fatal anticoagulant shot said. Though muffled beneath his hands, it sounded closer to “You bruk by doze.”

“Hey, Truman! Ease up, will you?” Adrian Baylor’s question was barked from a brief distance. The burly Handler strode toward us from the other end of the Jeep line, bristling like an angry dog. “The kid’s a week out of Boot Camp, and it was an accident.”

“The kid,” Wyatt said, “is too skittish to be using live rounds. Who the hell’d he pay to graduate?”

“The kid has a fucking name,” snarled the kid in question. Color flamed both cheeks. He’d dropped his hands, allowing his broken nose to bleed freely. Half a foot shorter than Wyatt, he stood up like the class nerd facing down the playground bully. For a rookie, he had brass ones.

Wyatt crossed his arms over his chest. “Which is?”

“Paul Ryan.”

“Okay, then.” Wyatt tilted his head toward Baylor. “Paul Ryan is too skittish to be in the field with live ammo.”

Paul’s entire face turned beet red.

Baylor growled low in his throat—a challenge. “Yeah, I’m sure I’ll be taking training advice from a guy who got his whole team killed.”

Wyatt flinched. I tensed, expecting more punches. Or at the very least, a couple of choice insults. When nothing happened, I got pissed. For Wyatt and for me, being one of the three dead people referenced in Baylor’s snarky comment.

I was across the blood puddle and in Baylor’s face before anyone could stop me. I balled my fist in the front of his black turtleneck and leaned in until we were nose to nose. I’d just crossed an unspoken line of code among Hunters and Handlers, but I didn’t much care. It’s not like I worked for them anymore.

“Our deaths were not Wyatt’s goddamn fault, understand? You fucking asshole.” I let him go, and he stumbled back a step.

“Evy, stop,” Wyatt said.

I rounded on him, my hands clenched. His shoulders had slumped. He didn’t seem angry anymore, only sad, but that just fueled my anger. “Why, Wyatt? Our deaths were not your fault.”

“Yeah.” His tone said otherwise, but it wasn’t a fight I was prepared to relive in front of the others. Maybe not again until I’d had a few days’ sleep. I thought he’d accepted the fact that Jesse and Ash, my late Triad partners, had been killed as part of a larger plan. Their deaths—and, ultimately, mine as well—were orchestrated, unpreventable. Not his fault. Not my fault, either.

Yeah, not my fault. Maybe if I said that a few more times, I’d even believe it.