Norman Thackeray obsessively wiped the bar at the Mouldy Finch pub with his grey rag, a ritual he performed with almost religious devotion. He’d scrubbed it a half-dozen times in the last three minutes, always in a counter-clockwise motion, as he’d been taught by his father.
As mercenaries, Connor and Lax had found themselves in all kinds of dangerous adventures over the years. But as Connor found himself in a life-or-death wrestling match with a battle-ready ergonomic office chair and an animated stapler tattooing his forehead, he realized the bar for their missions had reached a new, humiliating low.
‘I long for my dear beloved...’ Yakiv Stepanovych Rybak—the son of Stepan the fisherman—jerked his head up and around at the unexpected disturbance, feeling the fine hairs at the back of his neck prickling. He stood at the river’s edge, surrounded by forest and scattered rocks. Wisps of mist caressed the mountainous terrain, and in the low, gray light of predawn, the source of the sound lay hidden.
Each time the wind blew the long grass rustled. Had there been any moonlight, Ayden knew, it would have appeared that a wave was passing across the steep hillside, like water rushing towards the shore. On this stygian night, with no moon in the sky and heavy clouds hiding the stars, anything beyond a few short steps could be known only by sound and so the sight lived only in Ayden’s memories. Memories from before they came. Memories now spoiled.
Pushed to the brink of desperation, the Council had finally sanctioned Jackson's solution, willing to take a gamble on his precise mind and the high-stakes gamble of his invention. Even Councillor Shaw had remained silent, much to Jackson’s surprise. Perhaps she had finally recognized the abyss facing all of them, or maybe she was simply allowing Jackson enough rope to hang himself should the invention fail. Regardless of the motive, Shaw’s silence made all the difference. Without friction, Jackson was allowed to cut off prying eyes and work in total isolation to maintain absolute control of his project until its activation. There could be no room for error.
It wasn’t the ascent of Mount Everest that took my breath away, it was the suffocating pressure of breaking a record.. The title of “First Chinese National To Reach The Summit” had been taken, of course—something my mother never ceased to remind me of. However, the record for the first Chinese national to reach the summit without oxygen was still ripe for the taking. To my family, it was the only acceptable consolation prize.
I… don’t know. Where I am. I feel heavy, dreamy, as if I’ve been asleep for days. I can’t quite focus my eyes. Wasn’t I just walking, wandering from the base?
Maximillian Sitz, the vampire that John Readman had pursued across an ocean and a continent, was dead. Or dead again. Once undead, now most definitely doubly dead.
The severed goat’s head stared at him from the hay-strewn floor, judgement in its clouding eyes.
The boy’s ruined sandals slapped against his cracked heel, each step a hollow echo of a life he had fled.